THEORY OF HUBER, 17 



In the second place, these female workers lay eggs, from 

 which some kind of a male originates, which male, however, 

 has never been seen nor ever known of in the hive. Thus 

 we have paradox upon paradox, irreconcileable with common 

 sense, and which must naturally expose the author of them 

 to the severest criticism. 



It is curious to observe the manner in which Huber ac- 

 counts for the absence of the procreating power of the com- 

 mon bee, and certainly his inventive faculty must have been 

 nearly exhausted, when he ventured upon the following 

 definition of it. Having, in his opinion, undeniably esta- 

 blished the fact of the common bee being a female, the next 

 thing which he had to do, was to account for the de- 

 struction of its procreating power ; for, certainly, the circum- 

 stance of the existence of 12 or 15000 females in a hive, and 

 all of them sterile, required some explanation from an indivi- 

 dual, who had penetrated so deeply, and with such eminent 

 success, into their natural history. Huber, therefore, very 

 properly proceeds to inform us, that at the time of the de- 

 position of the egg by the queen, from which a working bee 

 was to spring, it possessed all the inherent principles of the 

 female sex ; but that on account of the contracted state of 

 the cell in which it was deposited, the larva underwent such 

 a degree of acute pain, that the productive organs were 

 destroyed, and, consequently, that on the bee emerging from 

 the cell, it was neither a male nor a female, but a species of 

 nondescript creature, not belonging to any class whatever 

 hitherto laid down by the physiologists. This may appear 

 very plausible, and no doubt, highly satisfactory to the 

 admirers of Huber, but then how is the contradiction to be 

 solved into which he subsequently falls, in which he states, 

 that some of the workers have ovaries, in which male eggs 

 have been discovered, from which we are authorized to infer, 

 that all the larvae do not experience such an extreme of jmin 

 as to destroy their productive organs ? It would appear, how- 

 b 5 



