QUEENS MANUFACTURED BY HUBER. 65 



sequently perceived that this fanciful tale of the seminal 

 fluid on the exterior of the abdomen of the queen, could not 

 possibly be credited by any person, possessing the least 

 degree of discernment; and therefore, rather than others 

 should detect and expose the absurdities of the statement 

 he judged it more politic and wise to acknowledge that he 

 was himself deceived ; for he confesses that that, which he 

 took to be the seminal fluid, was found after all to be nothing 

 more than an illusion, caused by the reflection of the rays of 

 light. But this illusion after all turned out to be a most 

 extraordinary object, being nothing less than the genital 

 organ of the drone, which the queen had actually brought 

 away with her, and as this most astounding discovery 

 cannot fail to afford considerable amusement, but, at the 

 same time, excite some degree of pity for the individual, who 

 could send forth such an absurdity into the world as the 

 result of positive experience, and as actually belonging to 

 the natural history of the bee, we will allow Mr. Huber to 

 recount the phenomenon in his own words. In the first 

 place, he discovers that the seminal fluid of the drone bee 

 coagulates in the open air ; and consequently, whenever the 

 queen returned with the external marks of fecundation, no 

 doubt whatever existed in the mind of Mr. Huber, that it 

 was the whitish substance which filled the sexual organs. 

 This absence, however, of all doubt, turns out after all to be 

 a very doubtful matter indeed, or in other words, it was on 

 the part of Mr. Huber a most decided blunder. With the 

 view, however, of ascertaining the fact, and solving every 

 doubt, respecting which he had previously declared, that no 

 doubt whatever existed, he proceeded to the manufacture of a 

 certain number of queens (of which art and mystery we shall 



however, evident, after a clear examination of the description given by those 

 naturalists, that they were in error, and that that, which they took for the 

 seminal matter, was simply the feeces of her majesty. 

 D 5 



