THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY 121 



brought home to us that we merely are waifs shipwrecked 

 on the ocean of nature ; and ever and anon, from a sudden 

 wave more transparent than others, there leaps forth a fact 

 that in an instant confounds all we imagined we knew. 

 But the reason of my preferring the second of these theories 

 is that, for one thing, the experiments of a Bordeaux bee- 

 keeper, M. Drory, have shown that in cases where all the 

 large cells have been removed from the hive, the mother 

 will not hesitate, when the moment for laying male eggs 

 has come, to deposit these in workers' cells ; and that, 

 inversely, she will lay workers' eggs in cells provided for 

 males, if she have no others at her disposal. And, further, 

 we learn from the interesting observations of M. Fabre on 

 the Osmis, which are wild and solitary bees of the Gastrilegids 

 family, that not only does the Osmia know in advance the 

 sex of the egg it will lay, but that this sex is " optional 

 for the mother, who decides it in accordance with the space 

 of which she disposes ; this space being often governed by 

 chance and not to be modified ; and here she will deposit a 

 male and there a female." I shall not enter into the details 

 of the great French entomologist's experiments, for they 

 are exceedingly minute, and would take us too far. But 

 whichever be the hypothesis we prefer to accept, either 

 will serve to explain the queen's inclination to lay her eggs 

 in workers' cells, without it being necessary to credit her 

 with the least concern for the future. 



It is not impossible that this slave-mother, whom we 

 are inclined to pity, may be indeed a great amorist, a great 

 voluptuary, deriving a certain enjoyment, an after-taste, as it 

 were, of her one marriage-flight, from the union of the 



Q 



