Liz PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
opened to us, one truth making way for the discovery of 
another: but still there will always be in nature, as well 
as in revelation, even in those things that fall under our 
daily observation, mysteries to exercise our faith and hu- 
mility: so that we may always reply to the caviller,— 
«‘ Thine own things and those that are grown up with 
thee hast thou not known; how then shall thy vessel 
comprehend the way of the Highest ?” 
Various have been the conjectures of naturalists, even 
in very recent times, with respect to the fertilization of 
the eggs of the bee. Some have supposed,—and the 
number of males seemed to countenance the supposition, 
—that this was effected after they were deposited in the 
cells. Ofthis opinion Maraldi seems to have been the 
author, and it was adopted by Mr. Debraw of Cambridge, 
who asserts that he has seen the smaller males (those 
that are occasionally produced in cells usually appro- 
priated to workers) introduce their abdomen into cells 
containing eggs, and fertilize them; and that the eggs so 
treated proved fertile, while others that were not re- 
mained sterile. The common or large drones, which 
form the bulk of the male population of the hive, could 
not be generally destined to this office, since their ab- 
domen, on account of its size, could only be introduced 
into male and royal cells. Bonnet, however, saw some 
motions of one of these drones, which, while it passed by 
those that were empty, appeared to strike with its abdo- 
men the mouth of the cells containing eggs*. Swam- 
merdam thought that the female was impregnated by 
effluvia which issued from the male’. Reaumur, from 
2 Bonnet, x. 259, » Bibl. Nat. i, 221. b.'ed, Till. 
