NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY BEE. 37 



any microscopie examinations, so as to put the matter on the 

 footing of demonstration. 



In January and February of 1852, I submitted several 

 Queen Bees to Dr. Joseph Leidy of Philadelphia, for a 

 scientific examination. I need hardly say lo any Naturalist 

 in this country, that Dr. Leidy has obtained the very highest 

 reputation, both at home and abroad, as a skillful naturalist 

 and microscopic anatomist. No man in this country or 

 Europe, was more competent to make the investigations 

 that I desired. He found, in making his dissections, a small 

 globular sac, not larger than a grain of mustard seed, (about 

 TjJj- of an inch in diameter,) communicating with the oviduct, 

 and filled with a virhitish fluid, which when examined under 

 the microscope, was found to abound in spermatozoa, the 

 animalculsB which are the unmistakable characteristics of 

 the seminal fluid. Later in the season, the same substance 

 was compared with some taken from the drones, and found 

 to be exactly similar to it. 



These examinations have settled, on the impregnable basis 

 of demonstration, the mode in which the eggs of the Queen 

 are vivified. In descending the oviduct to be deposited in 

 the cells, they pass by the mouth of this seminal sac or 

 spermatheca, and receive a portion of its fertilizing contents. 

 Small as it is, its contents are sufficient to impregnate hun- 

 dreds of thousands of eggs. In precisely the same way, 

 the mother wasps and hornets are fecundated. The females 

 alone of these insects survive the Winter, and they often 

 begin single handed, the construction of a nest, in which, at 

 first, only a few eggs are deposited. How could these eggs 

 hatch, if the females which laid them, had not been impreg- 

 nated, the previous season ? Dissection proves them to have 

 a spermatheca, similar to that of the Queen Bee. It never 

 seems to have occurred to the opponents of Huber, that the 

 4 



