PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 133 
when shut up with a portion of comb, containing only 
worker brood, would soon erect royal cells, and thus ob- 
tain queens:—the experiment was frequently repeated, 
and the result was almost uniformly the same. In one in- 
stance he tried it with a single cell, and it succeeded *. 
This curious fact was communicated to the celebrated 
Bonnet, who, though he hesitated long before he admit- _ 
ted it, was at length fully convinced. M. Withelmi (Schi- 
rach’s brother-in-law), though at first he accounted for 
the fact upon other principles, and objected strongly to 
the doctrine in question, induced by the powerful evidence 
in favour of it, at last gave up his former opinion, and 
embraced it. And, to mention no more, the great Aris- 
tomachus of modern times, M. Huber, by experiments 
repeated for ten years, was fully convinced of the truth of 
Schirach’s position®, 
The fact in question, though the public attention was 
first called to it by the latter gentleman, had indeed been 
practically known long before he wrote. M. Vogel, in 
a letter to Wilhelmi, asserts that numerous experiments 
confirming this extraordinary fact had been made by 
more than a hundred differerit persons, in the course of 
more than a hundred years; and that he himself had 
known old cultivators of bees who had unanimously 
declared to him, that, when proper precautions were 
taken, ina practice of more than fifty years, the experi- 
ment had never failed *. Signor Monticelli, the Neapo- 
litan professor before mentioned, informs us that the 
Greeks and Turks of the Ionian Islands know how to 
make artificial swarms; and that the art of producing 
4 Bonnet, x. > Huber, i. 132. ¢ Schirach, 121. 
