INSECTA, 283 



beyond a doubt by the experiment of John Hunter,* who actually 

 succeeded in fecundating the eggs of an unimpregnated female, by 

 applying to them a little of the fluid contained in its cavity : but 

 that the reader may comprehend fully the reason of such an arrange- 

 ment, it is necessary to consider the circumstances under which 

 insects propagate. 



In most animals, sexual union may be repeated several times 

 during the life of individuals, but, in insects, intercourse between 

 the sexes is permitted to take place but once ; and this solitary 

 congress must suffice for the impregnation of all the ova, however 

 numerous, and however imperfect may be the developement of 

 some of them at the time when the embrace occurs. 



Let us take the hive-bee as an example ; in the females of this 

 insect the ovigerous tubes (fig. 127, a, a) are excessively numerous, 

 and the eggs produced in them may amount to between 20,000 and 

 30,000 : these eggs, of course, arrive at maturity in succession, 

 and not all at once ; so that at the moment when the queen-bee 

 meets her selected mate, perhaps the majority of the ova are not 

 in a sufficiently mature condition to be rendered fertile. Never- 

 theless, the meeting of the sexes cannot be repeated ; for no sooner 

 has copulation taken place than the favoured male dies, and 

 by a simultaneous butchery all the other males, or drones as 

 they are commonly designated, are F,v. 127. 



destroyed by the working inhabit- 

 ants of the hive. The quantity 

 of the fecundating liquor, there- 

 fore, supplied by one connection, 

 must serve to fertilize all the eggs 

 produced during the lifetime of the 

 queen-bee ; and for this purpose it 

 is stored up in the spermatheca 

 (Jig. 127, c), so that, how numer- 

 ous soever may be the eggs formed, 



they are all vivified as they pass out through the oviducts (5, e), 

 and thus come in contact with the orifice of the reservoir of semen. 



In Meloe variegatus (Jig. 121) the ovaria (d) consist of 

 wide and capacious sacs, covered externally with innumerable 

 glandiform vesicles, opening into the cavity of the ovary (e). The 

 gluten-secretor (h) and the spermatheca (g) are seen as in 

 Melolontha, appended to the common oviduct (f) ; but the sperma- 



* Home's Lectures on Comp. Anat. vol. iii. p. 370. 



