2228 The Zoologist— July, 1870. 



shaken when he succeeded in rearing both from the caterpillar. In vol. iv., 

 however, Freyer added that his later investigations left him still in doubt, 

 though he adduced additional evidence in favour of theii* identity. The 

 distinctions which he relied on in the perfect insects did not hold good in 

 examples in Mr. Butler's collection ; the figures of the larvae show a very close 

 resemblance, the differences being less conspicuous than from Freyer's descrip- 

 tion would be expected, and even those differences, according to Freyer, are not 

 constant. Mr. Butler concluded as follows : — " If then the lan'se and the 

 imagines vary inter se, and the pupae are aUke, why are we to consider the two 

 species distinct? Is it because there is a something about the two insects that 

 at once tells us which form we have before us, even though we cannot describe 

 it? I do not admit that this is always the case, but if it were, it is no more 

 than one sees in acknowledged varieties of Vanessa C-album and fifty other 

 species." 



Major Munn (who was present as a Visitor) exhibited a number of 

 anatomical drawings of the honey-bee and its larva, and numerous pieces 

 of comb in illustration of the views expressed by him as to the reproduction of 

 the bee. Criticizing and dissenting from the theory of Dzierzon and Von 

 Siebold, the speaker stated his belief that there was perceptible difference 

 between the male eggs and female eggs ; that the natural duration of life of the 

 queen bee was two years, in the first of which she laid the contents of the first 

 ovary, and in the second year of the second ovary ; that all the eggs first laid 

 were females, and the last laid were males ; and that it was only occasionally, 

 and by the prevention of laying, that the hfe of the queen could be prolonged 

 for four years, as had been done by Mr. Desbrough. Major Munn then 

 proceeded to question the commonly received opinion as to the mode in which 

 the queen bee is reared, and contended that the notion of the larvae being fed on 

 the so-called royal jelly, or in fact that any of the larvae were /erf, was erroneous ; 

 the larvae, he said, have no anal opening until the last day of their larval 

 life, and no main canal extending further than the spinnerets : the larvae, in 

 fact, are lubricated, not fed ; they grow by absorption, and in the case of the 

 queen the rate of absorption is quickened by a layer of honey or jelly placed 

 behind the cell in which the larva is, forming a hot-bed in the rear of the 

 larva and enabling it to absorb at both ends or on all sides at once : with a 

 view to the formation of this hot-bed, queen-eggs were invariably laid in 

 unfinished cells. The worker or drone larvae were not subject to this forcing 

 process ; and whenever a queen was raised from worker brood, without the aid 

 of the hot-bed, a dwarf queen was the invariable result. 



Paper read. 

 The following paper was read : — " The Genera of Coleoptera studied 

 chronologically " (Part 2, from 1802 to 1821) ; by Mr. G. R. Crotch.— J. W.D. 



