134 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
queens at will has been practised by the inhabitants of a 
little Sicilian island called Favignana, from very remote 
antiquity; and he even brings arguments to prove that 
it was no secret to the Greeks and Romans?, though 
had the practice been common it would surely have been 
noticed by Aristotle and Pliny. 
Bonner, a British apiarist, asserts that he has had 
successful recourse to the Lusatian experiment®; and 
Mr. Payne of Shipdam in Norfolk (who for many years 
has been engaged in the culture of bees, and has paid 
particular attention to their proceedings) relates that he 
well remembers that the bees of cne of his hives, which 
he discovered had lost their queen, were engaged in 
erecting some royal cells upon the ruins of some of the 
common ones. He also informs me that he has found 
Huber’s statements, as far as he has had an opportunity 
of verifying them, perfectly accurate. 
As I think you will allow that the evidence just de- 
tailed to you is abundantly sufficient to establish the fact 
in question, we will now see whether any satisfactory 
account can be given for such changes being produced 
by such causes. ‘It does not appear to me improbable,” 
says Bonnet, “that a certain kind of nutriment, and in 
more than usual abundance, may cause a development 
in the grubs of bees, of organs which would never be 
developed without it. I can readily conceive also, that 
a habitation considerably more spacious, and differently 
placed, is absolutely necessary to the complete develop- 
ment of organs which the new nutriment may cause to 
grow in all directions*.” And again, with respect to the 
a Huber, i. 453. "Bonner on Bees, 56. * Huber, it, 445, 
