The Young Queens 



demands. Nature, however, heedless of 

 these more intrinsic causes, is so deeply 

 concerned with the multiplication of 

 males, that we sometimes find, in mother- 

 less hives, two or three workers possessed 

 of so great a desire to preserve the race 

 that, their atrophied ovaries notwithstand- 

 ing, they will still endeavour to lay ; and, 

 their organs expanding somewhat beneath 

 the empire of this exasperated sentiment, 

 they will succeed in depositing a few eggs 

 in the cells ; but from these eggs, as from 

 those of the virgin mother, there will 

 issue only males. 



[77] 

 Here we behold the active intervention 

 of a superior though perhaps imprudent 

 will, which offers irresistible obstruction 

 to the intelligent will of a life. In the 

 insect world such interventions are com- 

 paratively frequent, and much can be 

 18 273 



