126 ADMINISTRATION OF ROYAL JELLY. 



such circumstances, she must emerge from her cell a kind 

 of cripple, completely contracted in her posterior parts, and 

 fully grown in her anterior, nor is it the least curious part of 

 the system promulgated by Huber and Dunbar, that they 

 have in no one instance mentioned the exact position of the 

 egg which the bees selected for the purpose of metamor- 

 phosing it into a queen. We therefore consider ourselves 

 at liberty to take that position most favourable to the sup- 

 port of our own system, and we will fix upon the egg to be 

 metamorphosed into a royal one, as being deposited in the 

 middle of the comb, being conscious to ourselves that we 

 thereby expose our opponents to the solution of the chief 

 difficulties of the question. 



Mr. Dunbar, however, does not rely solely upon the 

 expansion and elongation of the cell for the procreation of a 

 queen, but he also coincides with Huber in the administration 

 of the royal jelly, for he says, "that the bees supply the larvae 

 of the intended queens with food of a different and superior 

 quality to that with which the common bees are fed while 

 in the brood state." But were even this point conceded 

 to Mr. Dunbar, it does not thence follow that this simple 

 supply of a different kind of food can in any degree alter 

 the sexual character of the egg. There must have existed 

 previously a supervening power, which altered the original 

 character of the egg ; and as far as the analogies of nature 

 can be traced, such an alteration could only be effected by 

 a fecundating power or principle which is wholly foreign to 

 the common bee, it being entirely destitute of any organ of 

 generation, and in which no seminal fluid has ever been 

 discovered. 



" Ilium adeo placuisse apibus mirabere morem, 

 Quod nee concubitu indulgent, nee corpora segnes, 

 In venerem solvent, aut fetus nexibus edunt." 



In the metamorphosis of the common egg, the destruction 

 of one vital principle must be effected before another of a 



