PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 531 



Mr. Chesliire said it was only from what be found by examination of 

 the ovarian tabes, and seeing tbat now and then tbere were gaps such as he 

 had drawn, tbat he had ventured to give this as a suggestion. He rather 

 intended the remark as a seeker after further information. 



Prof. Bell asked if there was any reason to be assigned why one worker 

 should be preferred to another in becoming fertile? Were there many 

 such, or only a few in the hive which underwent this change? 



Mr. Cheshire said it had been thought by some that these workers had 

 been brought up in cells adjoining that of the queen, and might, therefore, 

 have to some extent been nourished by some of the special food given to 

 the larva of the queen ; but since fertile workers had been found in hives 

 which had never produced queens, this idea was hardly tenable. He 

 thought it might be due to some special stimulus exerted by the bees under 

 a strong desire to obtain eggs, though it was difficult to say of what nature 

 the stimulus actually was. 



Prof. Bell suggested that this bore some analogy to male lactation, as 

 when a hare was shot some time ago in America suckling its young, and 

 was afterwards found to be a male. The point of his inquiry, however, was 

 how these workers became in the first instance induced to lay eggs — 

 whether there were any stimulating circumstances which promoted their 

 develoi^ment ? There appeared to be no doubt that attention was paid to 

 them afterwards ; but was there nothing which went before ? 



Mr. Cheshire said this was a question upon which he was seeking infor- 

 mation. He was quite unable at present to answer it ; but since all workers 

 were at first fed in the larval state in the same manner as those intended 

 for queens, and that the queens had this diet through all their larval de- 

 velopment, it was highly probable that some of the worker larvae were so 

 fed for a longer period than others. Such would be especially favourable 

 subjects for conversion into fertile workers. 



The President said the point appeared to be whether the attention given 

 to these workers was a cause or only an effect of the alteration in their con- 

 dition. 



Mr. Cheshire could only say that there was something about the queen 

 which had some special fascination for the workers. They would come 

 upon a knife which had been used to dissect a queen, or on the hand of a 

 person who had taken up a queen. He had seen a rose-leaf upon which a 

 queen had been placed visited in an inquiring manner by bees for many 

 days afterwards, and the same thing occurred in the case of the fertile 

 worker. Her body, although she had never copulated, attracted bees most 

 singularly after she had been completely dissected. 



Prof. Bell asked whether there could be any doubt as to the fact that 

 these bees were really workers ? 



Mr. Cheshire said there could be none whatever ; the queens were dis- 

 tinctly different in every part of their anatomy, so that there was no possi- 

 bility of making a mistake. 



Mr. Crisp called attention to the earliest known compound Microscope, 

 one by Campani, of Kome, made at some time prior to 1665, as was 

 evidenced by the absence of a field lens to the eye-piece. 



Zeiss's new form of adjustable nose-piece was exhibited, in which the 

 objective was made to slide on and off the nose-piece in an inclined plane, 

 which insured its not touching the object when being changed. 



