PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 159 
one state of the ovary this principle may cause the em- 
bryos to become workers, in another males. And some- 
thing of this kind perhaps may be the cause of herma- 
phrodites in other animals. But this I give merely as 
conjecture*: the truth seems enveloped in mystery that 
we cannot yet penetrate. Huber is of opinion that a 
single impregnation fertilizes all the eges that a queen 
will produce during her whole life, which is sometimes 
more than two years®. But of this enough. 
I said that forty-six hours after impregnation the 
queen begins laying worker eges;—this is not, however, 
invariable. When her impregnation takes place late in 
the year, she does not begin laying till the following 
spring. Schirach asserts, that in one season a single fe- 
male will lay from 70,000 to 100,000 eggs*. Reaumur 
says, that upon an average she lays about two hundred in 
a day, a moderate swarm consisting of 12,000, which are 
laid in two months; and Huber, that she lays above a 
hundred. All these statements, the observations being 
made in different climates, and perhaps under different 
circumstances, may be true. ‘The laying of worker eges 
begins in February, sometimes so early as January’. After 
this, in the spring, the great laying of male eggs com- 
@ This conjecture receives strong confirmation from the following 
observations of Sir E. Home, which I met with since it came into my. 
mind. From the nipples present in man, which sometimes even af- 
ford milk, and from the general analogy between the male and fe- 
male organs of generation, he supposes the germ is originally fitted to 
become either sex; and that which it shall be is determined at the 
time of impregnation by some unknown cause. Philos. Trans. 1799. 
157. 
> 7, 106— © Schirach, 7. 13. 4 Tpid, 13, Thorley, 105. 
