BEE MANUAL. 65 



No wonder that people were slow to accept this wonderful 

 doctrine. Von Berlepsch, in his exposition of the Dzierzon 

 Theory, says : — 



"From time immemorial naturalists have regarded as universally 

 true the doctrine that no living creature can be developed from the egg 

 of a female without male impregnation. And when occasionally 

 exceptional cases were adduced the men of science treated the state- 

 ments with contempt, or endeavoured to impugn their force or 

 validity by assuming that the observers were either incompetent or 

 careless." 



Dr. Dzierzon's discoveries accordingly were received with 

 incredulity and sometimes with derision ; but magna est Veritas, 

 et prevalebit ! Dr. Dzierzon was assisted in proving his case 

 by such scientists as Professors Leuckart and Von Siebold of 

 Munich, and by the Baron von Berlepsch, the author of the 

 celebrated " Apistical Letters." 



Von Siebold "demonstrated clearly, that not only do living larvae 

 occasionally issue from a portion of the unimpregnated eggs of the 

 silkworm, and develop as moths — some male, others female ; but that 

 in various species of butterflies the virgin females regularly lay eggs 

 which, not partially only and occasionally, but uniformly and without 

 exception, produce females." 



Prof. Leuckart subsequently noticed a still greater number of 

 exceptions, and says : — 



" There can be no doubt that parthenogenesis exists far more exten- 

 sively among insects than is no w known or anticipated. " 



And Von Berlepsch adds : — 



" This exception is found also among bees ; with this difference, 

 however, that among them all the eggs which remain unimpregnated 

 invariably develop as males, and those which are impregnated invaria- 

 bly develop as females, and that the impregnation of the egg determines 

 its feminine sexuality. Consequently, in the case of bees, not only is 

 every egg susceptible of development, though unimpregnated, but 

 masculinity pre-exists therein, which (marvellous indeed !) is trans- 

 formed into feminity by impregnation with the male sperm." 



THE DZIERZON THEORV. 



Space will not admit of going into the details of observations 

 and experiments by which the case has been proved. I shall 

 only add the thirteen " propositions " of the Dzierzon theory, 



F 



