LAWS OF REPRODUCTION, 27 
queen it was oceupied quite differently—the one con- 
taining some millions of spermatozoa and the other 
none at all. Then came the search for a distinction 
between drone and worker eges—eges which to the 
closest scrutiny hitherto had proved absolutely iden- 
tical both without and within. But Professor von 
Siebold, under the auspices of Baron von Berlepscli, 
at length told a different tale, for he proved the impor- 
tant fact that worker eges contain within them 
spermatozoa, while drone eggs are absolutely destitute 
of such. Thus it became evident that every ege, as it 
originally issued from the queen’s ovaries, was a drone 
egg, but that if on passing the spermatheca a com- 
pression was given which caused one or more sperma- 
tozoa to enter it, the sex of the egg was thereby 
changed, and it would require to be laid in a worker 
cell. 
A controversy has since been raised as to the actual 
cause of the compression just noticed, for it appeared 
to some that the queen did not administer the 
squeeze herself, but the cells administered it for her. 
Thus the late Mr. Wagner of Philadelphia started the 
theory, which long found favour with very many, that 
when the queen’s abdomen was inserted in the worker 
cells, the narrow limits of these compressed her, and 
thus produced fecundation of the egg, while the more 
spacious drone cells had no effect of the kind. This 
hypothesis was ingenious, but assuredly very unhappy 
and unnatural. For the queen’s spermatheca is of 
infinitesimal dimensions, and thus any external pro- 
cess of pinching which would not cause it utterly to 
collapse, must necessarily itself be infinitesimal too. 
