The Life of the Bee 
which are wild and solitary bees of the 
Gastrilegide 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 entomo- 
logist’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 male and female principle that 
thus comes to pass in her being. Here 
again nature, never so apeent Ns so cunningly 
184 
