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ANNALS OF THE 
these bodies may be detected finding their way into the interior of the egg. When 
the membranes of the egg are very transparent they may be detected in the in- 
terior. Leuckart, however, failed iu all his attempts to discover them in the eggs of 
bees. Siebold next applied himself to the task. He found the state of things to be 
such as exactly to suit his theory. He found spermatozoa in neuter's eggs, but none 
in drone's eggs ; and were the observations completely established, they would be 
decisive of the question. The egg of the bee is confessedly one of the most difiicult 
microscopic objects, and the observations would require the confirmation of other 
observers, especially as Siebold had only once an opportunity of examining new 
laid eggs, when on a visit to Pastor Dzierzien in Silesia I have examined hundreds 
of eggs, many of them submitted to the microscope the moment after deposition, 
but have never detected the filaments in question, though adopting the precise 
method suggested by Siebold. Objects exceedingly like spermatozoa were de- 
tected, but they were easily shown to be folds of the enveloping membrane. The 
optical power employed seemed to be superior to that of Siebold, as I could clearly 
make out the micropylar apparatus which baffled all his attempts. 
It has also been attempted to settle the matter by a cross between our own 
and the Italian bee, which has very distinct characters. If Siebold's theory be cor- 
rect, all the neuters might show the character of the males, but the drones should 
have only the character of the queen. The result was against this theory, as some 
drones were found with the character of the parent drone, and a single case would 
be sufficient to overthrow the theory. 
An obvious plan of determining whether the ova of the bee are sexually dis- 
tinct from the moment of their being deposited, is to interchange them — that is, to 
put an ovum, deposited in a drone's cell, into a neuter cell, and vice versa. If no 
interchange was made, all the ova in the drone cells would become drones, and 
those in the neuter cells would become neuter bees. Should it be found, however, 
that this held even when the ova were interchanged, the necessary conclusion would 
be, that the ova are not db initio distinct, and that the differentiation of sex de- 
pends on the treatment they receive alter being deposited. The experiment of 
interchanging was made with all care. By means of a camel's hair pencil the ovum 
was removed from one cell and deposited in another. But in all cases, and hun- 
dreds of trials were made, the ova were removed as foreign matter and destroyed, 
the bees greedily devouring the ova. In the above cases, the ovum was laid loose 
in the cell instead of being attached at one end, so as to stand perpendicularly, as 
in the case when deposited by the qneen. Thinking that this might possibly be the 
cause of the failure, I imitat .d nature as closely as possible, and with gum got the 
ova to stand erect. This experiment also failed ; the ova were all removed and 
destroyed. I made still another attempt to get the ova hatched in other than their 
appropriate cells. This was to cut oat the bottom of the cell, so as not to disturb 
