JTO. THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. (VOL XXXIX. 
ter has entered the egg, facilitates the finding of the sperm- 
nucleus, which keeps its place close behind the migrating cen- 
trosome. Were it not for the objections which have been raised 
by men like Pflüger and Bethe, I should scarcely need to men- 
tion that this sperm-aster develops in the same way throughout 
the entire animal kingdom, that in polyspermic bee-eggs similar 
asters appear in numbers equalling those of the spermatozoa 
which enter the egg, and that also in the so-called drone-egg an 
aster wöuld surely develop, should a spermatozoön enter it. 
The experiments made upon the eggs of bees, consisting in 
transporting them from one kind of comb-cell into another, in an 
attempt to change their sex, have proved to be failures. Should 
similar experiments, however, some day meet with success, it 
would only show that it may be possible artificially to change 
sex.! The objection that in drone-eggs the aster might not 
develop because of the influence of the saliva of the workers 
which take charge of the eggs as soon as they have been laid, 
and that in consequence a spermatozoón, though present, might 
easily be overlooked, does not bear critical investigation. Experi- 
ments and microscopic preparations alike showed that the saliva 
of the workers exerts no such influence. For when fertilized 
eggs are treated with the same saliva, the aster none the less 
develops. Or would the opponents of parthenogenesis — who 
believe that a queen can by no reflex be impelled to fertilize 
or to inhibit the fertilization of her eggs as she lays them in 
worker-cells or in drone-cells — be bold enough to affirm that the 
Workers treat the eggs with two different kinds of saliva, corre- 
sponding to the comb-cells in which these eggs are laid? Yet 
this is what the opponents of parthenogenesis claim. How 
! Experiments in attempting to change sex artificially have been made by vom 
Kati, by v. Buttel-Reepen, by myself, and by others with negative results. 
Experiments with apparently positive results have been made and often described 
by Dickel a German bee-keeper. I desire here earnestly to warn against the 
attempt to use in any way whatsoever the experiments of Dickel without first 
verifying them, as he has on several occasions in his scientific work practiced 
deliberate fraud in an effort to support his theory, for which delinquency he has 
frequently been called to account by v. Buttel-Reepen and myself. The history 
of the falsely labelled bottles containing bee-eggs, together with my exposure of 
this deliberate trick, made clear the absence of spermatozoa in drone-eggs and thus 
demonstrated the efficiency of microscopic study. 
