ORGANS OF THE QUEEN. 227 



contain 25,000,000 of spermatozoa. While not denying 

 possibility to his estimate, I certainly think it far 

 too high. Whichever sum be accepted as the true 

 one, it is demonstrable, that economy in the distri- 

 bution of these fertilising threads is of the highest 

 possible moment, for, should they be shot forth hap- 

 hazard, they would be exhausted long before the 

 queen's death, when she would be, of course, reduced 

 to the condition of a queen that had never mated, 

 and so become, like such, a drone-breeder: a circum- 

 stance by no means uncommon — presenting itself, 

 indeed, quite frequently where, under careless manage- 

 ment, queens are allowed to fade out instead of being 

 displaced. They may then, in the absence of accident, 

 attain the ripe old age of four, or even five, years. 

 Many of these ancient dames — discarded because 

 they no longer yielded workers, or only a few, amidst 

 many drones, and these produced in worker cells — 

 have been sent to me for dissection, and I have inva- 

 riably found the spermatheca quite denuded of its 

 spermatozoa, or only containing such a miserable 

 residue as to clearly show that the eggs could, at 

 the best, be but occasionally fertilised. The economy 

 we see to be so essential is secured as follows : The 

 duct (k, k) through which the spermatozoa pass, as 

 extruded in detachments from the spermatheca, I find 

 to be the centre of another gland (/, /), which seems 

 to have escaped the attention of previous observers. 

 This gland we may fairly infer to be excited to 

 secretion' by the presence of the spermatozoa, just as 

 food excites our salivary glands to the secretion of 

 saliva, and the stomach to the secretion of gastric 



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