88 PARTHENOGENESIS 



eighth eggs I could only perceive a motionless spermatozoid ; in 

 the thirty-ninth, fortieth and forty-first, on the contrary, I was 

 able to discover two rigid spermatozoids. 



On the 23rd of August a third comb furnished with female 

 eggs was also employed for investigation, the eggs in which 

 had only just been deposited. These eggs, however, did not 

 show themselves so favourable to the above-described mode 

 of investigation employed by me, because the yelk would 

 not detach itself so easily from the vitelline membrane after 

 the rupture of the envelopes; w 7 here I succeeded in pro- 

 ducing the empty space between the envelopes of the egg 

 and the yelk in these eggs, I often found it possible to dis- 

 cover spermatozoids in their interior. Not to weary the reader, 

 I will only enumerate a portion of these investigations in their 

 order : — The forty-third egg allowed a motionless seminal fila- 

 ment to be detected, sitting externally upon the micropylar 

 apparatus. The forty-fourth and forty- fifth eggs furnished no 

 results, from unsuccessful preparation. The examination of these 

 was not repeated until seven o'clock in the morning of the 

 24th of August, when these deposited eggs were fifteen hours 

 old. The forty-sixth egg contained several coiled but motionless 

 spermatozoids. In the forty-seventh egg I was able to discover 

 one motionless seminal filament ; with the forty-eighth the pre- 

 paration was unsuccessful, and with the forty- ninth and fiftieth 

 I was obliged to leave it doubtful whether the object which 

 might have been taken for a seminal filament, was such in 

 reality. Both the fifty-first and fifty-second eggs allowed a 

 motionless seminal filament to be clearly distinguished in the 

 empty space, when the yeik had retracted itself downwards from 

 the micropylar apparatus by the rupture of the egg-shells. 



If I sum up the observations just referred to, they furnish 

 on the whole a very favourable result, considering the difficulties 

 of the investigation, for I have also convinced myself, that these 

 investigations of the egg of the Bee, are, as Leuckart has very 

 justly asserted*, amongst the most difficult of all investigations 

 of the kind. Amongst the fifty-two female Bee-eggs examined 

 by me with the greatest care and conscientiousness, thirty fur- 

 nished a positive result; that is to say, in thirty, I could prove 

 * Sec his Seebacher Studien in the Bienenzeitimy, 1855, p. 205. 2. 



