ANALOGY OF HUNTER. 141 



administered. " An infant," says Mr. Kirby, " tightly 

 swathed in swaddling-clothes, and fed with an unwholesome 

 food, or uncherished by genial heat, may become sterile." 

 This may or may not be true, nor will we stop to discuss so 

 knotty a point ; but the question which we have to consider 

 is, whether the sex of the infant be changed by the erro- 

 neous treatment ? — the development of its organic structure 

 may be cramped and deformed ; its functions may be im- 

 peded or diminished in power, but its sex remains without 

 the slightest alteration or difference. It must, however, be 

 borne in mind, that we consider the common bee to be a 

 decided neuter ; and, consequently, the effect of the royal jelly 

 must be to us still more wonderful, than merely possess- 

 ing the power of changing a sterile nature into a fertile one : 

 for according to Kirby and Huber, an actual change in the 

 sexual character is effected. 



Mr. Kirby, however, enters further into the field of analogy, 

 in order to account for this change in the sex of the bee ; 

 but we confess that we are so grossly stupid as not to be 

 able to trace the slightest analogy in any of the cases. " If a 

 cow," says Mr. Kirby, and he quotes John Hunter as his 

 authority, " brings forth two calves, and one of them is a 

 female, it is barren ; and this is owing to there being two in 

 one dwelling, where there should have been only one, and 

 consequently receiving a smaller share of nutriment, which 

 has an effect upon the ovaries *." 



* The twins of a cow were formerly called John Martins, an etymology, 

 which would have puzzled Johnson more than the obnoxious word, mahogany. 

 John Hunter, however, is rather an unfortunate authority to depend upon in 

 all matters relative to the bee ; and Kirby, before he quoted Hunter on the 

 barrenness of the twins of a cow, and thence inferring the sterility of the bee, 

 should have ascertained whether Hunter was correct in his allegation relative 

 to the barrenness of the twins, arising simply from the contracted space in 

 which they are bred. We admit that the barrenness of the cow's twins was 

 formerly currently acquiesced in, but subsequent researches have entirely 

 exploded that opinion, and the fertility of the female twin is now indisputably 

 confirmed. 



