Miscellaneous, 497 



two caudals are nearh' round, especially the penultimate, the dia- 

 meter of which is 65 rcillims. 



The ribs of the first pair have their sternal extremity much more 

 widened than in B. biscayensis. 



The scapula is a little thicker than in the latter species, and pre- 

 sents a very small rudiment of the coracoid apophysis. It is much 

 wider than high ; as in the B. hiscai/ensis of Naples and Philadel- 

 phia, its width is 15 centims. more than its height.— Com^^es Eendus, 

 September 9, 1878, p. 410. 



Oil Part7u'nO(/enesis in Bees. By M. A. Sanson. 



In a recent note * M. J. Perez throws doubt upon the pheno- 

 menon of parthenogenesis in bees, taking his stand upon a certain 

 interjiretation of facts of heredity which he has observed. I am 

 surprised to find him speaking of a fact as hypothetical which has 

 been demonstrated experimentally a great many times, and the 

 verification of which is a very easy matter. In 1868 (Comptes 

 Rendus, tom. Ixvii. p. 51) the Academy had before it a proof of 

 this fact. I exhibited a comb containing only worker-cells filled 

 with males or drones developed in those cells. M. Bastian and 

 myself had obtained it at Wissembourg, by causing a female, the 

 seminal receptacle of which was destitute of spermatozoids, to deposit 

 her eggs in it. I also, at the same time, exhibited workers lodged 

 in drone-cells, and produced from eggs laid by a fecundated female 

 which had no other cells at her disposal. The purpose of our ex- 

 periments had been to check the theory put forward by Landois 

 with regard to the mode of development of the sexes. AU bee- 

 keepers who are cm coiirant of science know that the old queens 

 which become drone-mothers (bourdonneuses) — that is to say, which 

 no longer lay anj" but drone-eggs — have exhausted their provision 

 of spermatozoids. When their seminal receptacle is examined 

 under the microscope, it contains only a perfectly transparent fluid. 

 We know also that lowering the temperature of a young fecundated 

 queen to such a degree as to kill the spermatozoids suffices to render 

 her immediately a drone-mother. The young queens which have 

 never coupled, and the workers which sometimes lay in hives which, 

 having lost their queen by accident, are called orphan-hives, only 

 deposit male eggs. 



These are facts acquired for science. It is easy to show, more- 

 over, that the interpretation of his observations given bj- M. Perez 

 is not the correct one. In a hive, the queen of which, he says, 

 was the daughter of an Italian of pure race and had been fecun- 

 dated by a French male, he examined with • scrupulous care 300 

 drones. He found the Italian characters in 151, those of hybrids 

 of different degrees in 66, and the French characters in 83, " from 

 which," he adds, " it evidently follows that the eggs of drones, like 

 the eggs of females, receive the contact of the semen deposited by 



* See Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. November, 3878, p. 428. 

 An7i. d: Mag. X. Hist. Ser. 5. Vol ii. 33 



