60 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



Bees and other hoarding Insects.* — Mr. E. A. Curley suggests 

 a manner in which colonies of bees, &c., have become differentiated 

 into males, females, and workers. 



After referring to the offspring of a cross between a black Spanish 

 and a buff Cochin fowl, as an example of the law of hereditary 

 variation of offspring, he proceeds to show that insufficiency of food 

 is a great factor in this variability, and " filial love " is another. 

 He then traces the history of a family of primitive bees up to the 

 present complicated social habits of these insects. This primitive bee is 

 thrifty and " affectionate," but it lays more eggs than can be properly 

 nourished, and some of the young will be imperfect : insufficiency of 

 food affects the genital organs of some of these young, which will, how- 

 ever, live, and while the other perfect ones will mate and leave the 

 family, these imperfect ones develope great " filial love " and help the 

 mother. He instances the affection of the young mule for its mother. 

 These " helpers " then provide food for the mother, who now is well 

 fed, and produces young which will be properly nourished and hence 

 perfect, so that in the new generation none will be workers, but all 

 will leave the family: the mother-bee then will be poorer, and 

 some of the new brood of young will be again imperfect, and so on. 

 But at the same time, some of the imperfect ones of the first brood 

 will mate and produce similar imperfect ones, who will become 

 " workers," who will in each succeeding generation help more and 

 more in getting food, till ultimately only one female is allowed to 

 produce : while the vforkers, at first both male and females in equal 

 number, have the number of males much reduced : and it is in this 

 sort of way that the existing conditions of bee and ant life have been 

 brought about. 



Antennae of Honey-bee."]' — Mr. T. J. Briant describes the anatomy, 

 musculature, and sense-organs of the antennas of the working 

 honey-bee. 



The scape or unjointed half of the antenna, moving on a fulcrum 

 point within the hemispherical cranial cup, is furnished with three 

 muscles, the insertion of which is described. The larger 12-jointed 

 flagellum or shaft bends on the scape with a simple motion of flexion 

 and extension effected by two muscles. The individual segments 

 though moveably connected, do not exhibit any muscles or voluntary 

 movement. Besides the hairs of the cup, which he regards as 

 mechanical, Mr. Briant describes on the flagellum — (a) openings 

 with a convex-rimmed membrane ; (6) smaller openings, not closed 

 but drawn out into a pointed hair; (c) hairs springing from still 

 smaller pits ; (d) on the last segment delicate hooked hairs, bent at 

 right angles at about half their leugth ; (e) tubular, slightly conical 

 structures imbedded in granular nervous matter within the flagellum 

 segments, and in immediate contact with the walls of the antennae, 

 through which they communicate with the exterior by fine grouped 

 pores. 



He regards the hooked hairs as actively sensory, and the other 



• Nature, xxxiii. (1885) pp. 64-7. 



t Journ. Linn. Soc. Lond. — ZooL, xix. (1885) pp. 84-8. 



