DIFFERENCE IN THE MAKE OF THE EGGS. 115 



queen does actually lay three distinct kind of eggs, but still 

 they also aver that the common bee is endowed with the 

 power of altering at pleasure the nature of those eggs, and 

 it is on this point that we are decidedly at issue. Dunbar 

 asserts that the queen lays only two kinds of eggs ; but the 

 mere scholar in apiarian science may convince himself of the 

 falsity of that hypothesis, by comparing the eggs ; which are 

 laid in the common cells, with those which are laid in the 

 cells of the drones. The egg of the common bee is of a 

 cylindrical shape, more pointed at one end than the other ; 

 that of the drones is more globular, and rather larger than 

 that of the common bee, and also more transparent ; and 

 lastly, the egg of the queen is larger than that of the drone, 

 and when examined by a microscope, the ends of it are 

 discovered to be flat, whilst those of the common bees are 

 directly conical. Independently of which, on examining the 

 ovarium of the queen, we never found that the eggs of the 

 common bees, and of the drones alternated, or even that 

 they were promiscuously placed ; on the contrary, each kind 

 lies in clusters; and this fact ought not to have escaped 

 the notice of Huber. Were the eggs of the drones and the 

 common bees to be placed alternately in the ovarium of the 

 queen, she would have to hasten from the drone cells 

 to those of the common bees, and vice versa, accord- 

 ingly as she had to lay an egg from which a drone or a 

 common bee is to spring. This, however, is at direct vari- 

 ance with all experience ; for the queen lays the eggs con- 

 secutively in the drone and the common cells, and that fact 

 being admitted, the deduction follows of course, that she is 

 conscious to herself of the precise nature of the egg which 

 she is then about to lay ; for were it differently constituted, 

 a drone egg might be laid in the cell of a common bee, and 

 the egg of a common bee in the cell of a drone, and thus 

 the corporeal dimensions of the respective kind of insects 

 f6 



