RETARDED FECUNDATION OF THE QTJEEN. 73 



her imprisonment, and, consistently with the theory of Huber, 

 she immediately took her flight in search of her paramour. 

 She was seen to return with the infallible marks of sexual 

 intercourse having taken place, and here commences 

 another extraordinary feature in the natural history of 

 this most wonderful insect. Huber discovers that if 

 the impregnation be retarded, she then lays nothing but 

 male eggs, or, in other words, that nothing but drones 

 are bred in the hive ; a circumstance, which we will venture 

 to affirm never took place in any hive whatever, but that the 

 whole statement is nothing more than one of the wild 

 conceits of Huber's brain. 



We will, however, proceed to examine this part of the 

 system of Huber more minutely ; for it is the early or late 

 impregnation of the queen which forms the groundwork 

 of his theory. It must be admitted, as an undeniable fact, 

 that the ovarium of the queen, at the time of her departure 

 from the hive with the swarm, is completely full of eggs 

 in all the stages of their growth, from the almost perfect 

 one, gradually dwindling to little points, almost imper- 

 ceptible, and thence to a white viscous fluid, which may 

 be considered as the germ of the future egg. The 

 ovarium of the common fowl presents nearly the same 

 phenomenon, and the hen will continue to lay her eggs 

 even without any impregnation of the male, until her 

 ovarium be wholly exhausted. Now, if we reason ana- 

 logically, what becomes of the immense number of eggs, 

 which were continually arriving at maturity, in the ovarium 

 of the queen, during the thirty-five days of her imprison- 

 ment ? Mr. Huber surely will not be so bold as to say 

 that during the time of her confinement, the growth of 

 those eggs was suspended, and that it was not until the 

 thirty- sixth, when she sought the male in the open air, 

 that any eggs were generated in her ovarium ? According 

 to this hypothesis, which is at variance with all analogy, 



