236 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
presented a memoir to tlie French Academy in which, he endeavours to 
prove that monstrosities, errors in development, may become the starting- 
point of new races. We do not know whether the learned author is strictly 
correct in stating that monstrosities are perpetuated in races. If, however, 
he means that natural variations become the starting point of new races he 
is merely following in Mr. Darwin’s steps. Vide Comptes Rendus , March 4. 
The Production of Male and Worker Bees. — M. H. Landois has presented, 
a most interesting note, on this subject, to the French Academy [March 4], 
This we translate in part. It is generally supposed, according to the 
observations of Dzierzon and Von Siebold, that the worker bees spring from 
eggs, fecundated by the queen that lays them, through the medium of the 
fluid in her receptaculum seminis ; whilst the male bees spring from unfe- 
cundated eggs. Siebold argues, especially, that the presence of zoosperms 
in the ova of the worker bees, and their absence in those of the males 
proves that, in bees at least, the formation of the sexes depends on fecunda- 
tion. But, says M. Landois, u the eggs from which the worker bees are 
hatched are placed in very different cells from those in which the eggs from 
which the males spring are laid. Hence arises the question, Could we, by 
placing the worker eggs in the cells of the male eggs, cause these eggs to 
be hatched into males P I have made this experiment on several occasions, 
at first unsuccessfully, because the bees defeated my efforts by restoring the 
eggs to their original positions ; but afterwards with perfect success. I was 
surprised to see worker bees hatched from the eggs that would otherwise 
have been males, and males from those which would have been workers.” 
This fact he proved repeatedly, and he, therefore, concludes that the sex of 
the insect depends, not upon fecundation or non-fecundation, but upon the 
conditions under which it is hatched — the food on which it is fed. 
The Organs of Parturition in the Kangaroo. — The relations of these parts 
which were described by Sir Everard Home, in 1795, were re-described by 
Professor Owen, and by M. Ed. Alix. The latter, in a memoir published 
some year or eighteen months since, alleged that Sir E. Home’s assertion of 
an aperture, leading from the parturition channel to the cloaca, was correct. 
This statement, however, was contradicted by Professor Owen, in a com- 
munication to the Comptes Rendus. In the Comptes Rendus , January 15, 
M. Alix re-asserts that such a condition of parts exists, and he denies that 
Professor Owen and Cuvier are correct. 
The Structure of the Heart in Fishes of the family Gadidce. — M. Jourdain, 
who has made a great number of dissections of the hearts of these fishes, 
shows that the heart of the Gadidae is an exception to the general rule in 
fishes. Like the heart of the Batrachian, it is devoid of the vascular 
element. Extremely fine injections, which were so thoroughly forced along 
the arteries as to return by the veins, failed to penetrate the walls of the 
ventricle or the auricle. The aortic bulb alone was found to possess a few 
slender branches, and these did not extend to the heart properly so-called. 
These arterioles are derived from the hyodean artery, and the veins open 
into the hyodean vein. To this absence of vessels in the heart corresponds 
a peculiar structure of the ventricular walls analogous to that seen in 
Batrachia. The muscular fibres, instead of forming a dense tissue^ are 
arranged in bundles, and have a series of spaces or trabeculae, which consti- 
