44 PHYSIOLOGY AND BREEDING. 



eggs was exhausted just when she laid the last one in the 

 drone cell, because I should at once inquire why she ex- 

 amined so many of those cells, if she did not intend to use 

 them, had they been emirty. It will require very positive 

 evidence to convince me that those worker cells did not 

 receive the identical eggs that would have been placed in 

 drone cells had they not been pre-occupied. 



But can we account for the impregnation of some, and 

 the non-impregnation of other eggs laid by the same 

 queen in the space of half an hour, aside from the theory 

 of Mr. Wagner? Among the objections raised to this by 

 Mr. H., the strongest appears to be that the eggs laid in 

 cells one-eighth of an inch deep, are just as sure to pro- 

 duce workers as those laid in deeper ones. It is consid- 

 ered by some persons as entirely fatal to the whole theory. 

 For myself, I feel very reluctant to admit that it affects it 

 in the least, yet I must acknowledge that it is somewhat 

 obscured by the circumstances. 



I very much hope that something explanatory will yet 

 be discovered, because if it is rejected, there are so many 

 things favoring this theory that wiU have to be otherwise 

 explained, that the task will be very heavy. It is possible 

 that when we have an arrangement by which we can wit- 

 ness the depositing of these' eggs in such shallow cells, we 

 shall discover something that will shed more light upon 

 the subject. It may be, that, just at the moment of the 

 passage of the egg, or the act of laying, the contents of 

 the abdomen are crowded downward, and it enlarges suffi- 

 ciently to touch the sides of a ceU only one-eighth of an 

 inch deep. 



When I first saw the smallest queen that I ever raised, 

 whose body was even smaller than a worker's, it occurred 

 to me at once that if she ever laid, it would be a test of this 

 principle. Her body being small it could not of course be 

 compresssed like others, and a large portion of her progeny 



