November 30, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



697 



posed to any danger which slow or imperfect 

 flight might induce, as capture by birds and 

 robber flies, may be fairly said to run much 

 more risk in their life than the drones which 

 make but a single brief daily flight (and that 

 not every day), it might be thought or as- 

 sumed that this strenuous life of the workers 

 would tend to weed out by lif e-and-death selec- 

 tion every slight disadvantageous variation in 

 the supporting skeleton (the venation) of the 

 wings, all-important organs in this outside 

 life. The series of drones reared in worker 

 cells were obtained for the purpose of testing 

 the assumption of Casteel and Phillipps (Biol. 

 Bull., v., 6, pp. 18-37, 1903) that extrinsic 

 factors, depending on the shape and size of 

 the brood cells, are of large importance in 

 producing the drone variation. The series of 

 drones hatched from worker eggs were ob- 

 tained for the purpose of ascertaining the 

 differences, if any, in the amount of variation 

 exhibited by individuals normally partheno- 

 genetically produced (from queen-laid eggs) 

 and those abnormally parthenogenetically pro- 

 duced (from worker -laid eggs). 



Now, the results of all this examination, 

 mensuration and compilation (and this work, 

 extending over several years, has been not in- 

 considerable) might be presented in a detailed 

 "way by curves and mathematical expressions, 

 with, I hope, some special interest and profit 

 to students of bionomics (which is evolution), 

 but for the purposes of this note the baldest and 

 most summary statements of them must suflice. 

 These statements are the following: (a) In 

 all but one of the characteristics studied, the 

 amount of variation, both quantitative and 

 qualitative, is markedly larger among the 

 drone bees than among the workers, and in 

 the one exceptional characteristic it is no less ; 

 (&) no more variation in wing characters is 

 apparent among drones or workers that have 

 not been exposed in imaginal condition to the 

 rigors of personal selection than exists among 

 bees, drones or workers, that have been so 

 exposed; (c) the variation in wing characters 

 in drone bees reared in worker cells is no 

 greater than that among individuals reared in 

 drone cells; {d) the variation among drones 



hatched from worker-laid eggs is markedly 

 larger than that among drones hatched from 

 queen-laid eggs (the drones of worker parent- 

 age are considerably smaller than those of 

 queen parentage). 



The significance of these results may be 

 suggested to be: of result a, that the blasto- 

 genic variation among bees does not depend 

 on amphimixis but is a result of some other 

 factor; of result h, that the assumed rigorous 

 intra-specific selection among slight continu- 

 ous variations, which is a basic assumption in 

 the natural-selection theory of species-form- 

 ing, does not appear to exist in the case of 

 honey-bees; of result c, that the larger varia- 

 tion of drone (parthenogenetically produced) 

 bees compared with worker bees (of bi-sexual 

 parentage) is not an ontogenetic phenomenon 

 due to special extrinsic factors (size of cell) 

 operative during development; and of result d, 

 that the farther we get from amphimixis the 

 greater we find the blastogenic variation to be ! 



I do not mean to insist too strongly on this 

 last conclusion! There are two possible facts 

 which may tend to invalidate it. One is that 

 of the abnormality of parentage; the lack of 

 practise, as it were, of the worker parents in 

 the complex business of reproduction; the 

 other is that our series of drones of queen 

 parentage reared in worker cells is unfortu- 

 nately too short to safeguard properly the 

 conclusions derived from the study of the 

 variation in it. While, as already stated as 

 result c, the variation in this series showed 

 no signs, except perhaps in one characteristic, 

 of being proportionally larger than among 

 drones reared in drone cells, a larger series 

 might have revealed this possible larger varia- 

 tion. But the data of this short worker-cell 

 series are typical of short-series data generally, 

 and the marked lessening of the range in vari- 

 ation shown is quite in consonance with what 

 should be found in a normal fractional part 

 of a large series. However, it is well to ac- 

 cept result c with some reservation and hence 

 to carry that reservation over to result d, in- 

 asmuch as the drones of worker parentage 

 were all reared in worker cells. The actual 

 fact, however, stated in result c is wholly true. 



