232 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [VoL. XXXV. 
were, however, from worker cells. The twenty-seven drone eggs which 
he examined were all *about twelve hours old," so that his failure 
to find in them sperm filaments is in no way proof that fertilization 
had not taken place. 
The most of the material for the investigations in Weismann’s 
laboratory was furnished by F. Dickel, who took the eggs from the 
hives, put them at once into the preservative fluid and sent them to 
Weismann. The main results are as follows: Whether the egg is 
fertilized or not can be determined with certainty only when it is 
killed in the stage of the second maturation spindle. Before that, in 
the stage of the //rs? maturation spindle, either the sperm nucleus 
is without radiations, or the sperm filament has not yet been meta- 
morphosed into a sperm nucleus. In either case it is a matter of 
chance, depending on location and physical condition whether the 
sperm cell can be recognized with certainty. In the second-spindle 
stage, on the contrary, the formation of a sperm aster is completed 
and the structure can neither be overlooked nor misinterpreted. 
Petrunkewitsch sectioned 123 eggs that were in the first-spindle 
stage. Twenty-nine of these were from worker cells; in twenty-three 
cases (79%) the sperm nucleus with radiations was present. On 
the other hand, ot a single sperm aster was found in any of the 
ninety-four eggs from drone cells. ‘The condition of eggs in the second- 
spindle stage was still more striking. very one of the sixty-two 
eggs from worker cells showed the sperm aster ; whereas of the 272 
eggs from drone cells ovZy ove contained a sperm aster. It is explained 
by Weismann that in this one case the queen probably made a mis- 
take and deposited a fertilized egg in the wrong (drone) cell, a phe- 
nomenon which bee-keepers have long recognized as occasionally 
taking place. 
Weismann believes, therefore, that Dzierzon’s views are fully con- 
firmed, — that normally eggs laid in drone cells are not fertilized and 
that those laid in worker cells are always fertilized. 
Dickel’s observation, that as soon as the queen has laid an egg, 
workers enter the cell and busy themselves with the egg, probably 
licking it and coating it with saliva, does not warrant his conclusion 
that the sex is determined thereby. What the significance of that 
act may be is not known. That it is of importance seems to follow 
from the results of some of Dickel’s experiments. He isolated a 
comb containing freshly deposited eggs by removing the workers 
from it and then enclosing it in fine gauze, without, however, remov-. 
ing the comb from the hive. All such eggs perished sooner or later, 
