14 SUPPOSED CASES OF 



from which young Spiders escaped, although no male Spider 

 had ever appeared in the business*. This short communi- 

 cation gives us not the smallest information upon the question, 

 whether this fertile Spider was actually taken in the virgin 

 state, and whether her seminal receptacle may not have been 

 filled with semen, before her capture, by a male Spider. Pre- 

 cisely the same remarks will apply to that female Spider which 

 Dumeril saw in Audebert's possession tj and which produced 

 brood for two years when imprisoned, without the assistance of 

 a male. That the male semen preserved in the seminal recep- 

 tacle of the female insect retains its fertilizing power for years, 

 is an ascertained fact; we know, for example, of Queen-Bees, 

 that after a single copulation they may be fertile for four or five 

 years ; and upon this point I may appeal to the testimony of 

 the Pastor of Carlsmarkt in Silesia, M. Dzierzon J, whom I 

 have learnt to know and value as one of the most experienced 

 and credible Bee-keepers, amongst living Apiarians. Another 

 observation of spontaneous reproduction sine concubitu, made 

 by Basler upon a female of Gastropacha quercifolia bred from 

 the caterpillar, is very briefly communicated by Bernoulli §. 

 As in this case we neither find any mention of how long it was 

 after the exclusion of the moth before Basler found it, nor 

 any account of the secure preservation and shutting up of 

 the pupa, a number of objections may be raised against the 

 supposed Parthenogenesis in this case, on the ground of the 

 deficiency of all exact details. No less inadmissible appears 

 the case observed and communicated by Bernoulli himself as one 

 of Parthenogenesis || . He had allowed a caterpillar of Episema 

 caruleocephala to change to the pupa state, but afterwards left 

 the pupa in a box without paying any further attention to it ; 

 in about fifteen days he opened the box for the first time, and 

 was surprised to find in it, besides the excluded moth which 



* This observation was first communicated in the Miscellanea curiosa, Dec. 

 iii. Annus iii. 1696, p. 63. 



t See Dictionnaire des Sciences Naturelles, torn. ii. 1816, p. 324. 



X See his Theorie mid Praxis des neuen Bienenfreundes, 2 Aufl. 1849, pp. 

 104 & 111. 



§ See Nouveaux Memoires de V Academie Royale des Sciences et Belles- 

 Lettres, Annee 1772. Berlin, 1774, pp. 24 & 34. 



|| Op. cit. supra, p. 25. 



