The Foundation of the City 
clamouring. When these are wanting, how- 
ever, or till they be provided, she resigns 
herself to laying her eggs in the large cells 
she finds in her road. 
These eggs, though absolutely identical 
with those from which workers are hatched, 
will give birth to males, or drones. Now, 
conversely to what takes place when a worker 
is turned into queen, it is here neither the 
form nor the capacity of the cell that 
produces this change; for from an egg laid 
in a large cell and afterwards transferred to 
a worker’s cell (a most difficult operation, 
because of the microscopic minuteness and 
extreme fragility of the egg, but one that I 
have four or five times successfully accom- 
plished) there will issue an undeniable male, 
though more or less atrophied. It follows 
therefore that the queen must possess the 
power, while laying, of knowing or deter- 
mining the sex of the egg, and of adapting it 
to the cell over which she is bending. She will 
rarely make a mistake. How does she con- 
trive, from among the myriad eggs her ovaries 
contain, to separate male from female, and 
lower them, at will, into the unique oviduct ? 
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