i86‘ 
Mr. Hunter's Observations on Bees. 
the copulation, a store of semen, although the male is alive: of 
this I shall now give an explanation in the silk-moth, which 
may be applied to the bee, and many other insects. 
In dissecting the female parts in the silk- moth, I discovered 
a bag lying on what may be called the vagina, or common 
oviduct, whose mouth, or opening, was external, but it had a 
canal of communication between it and the common oviduct. 
In dissecting these parts before copulation, I found this bag 
empty, and when I dissected them after, I found it full. Sus- 
pecting this to contain the semen of the male, I immediately 
conceived the following experiment: I opened the female as 
soon as the male had united to her, and found the penis in the 
opening of this bag, and by opening the duct where the penis 
lay, I observed the semen lying on the end of the penis. In 
another, I observed the bag to fill in the time of copulation: 
and in a pair that died in the act, I found the penis in this 
passage. 
When we consider the impregnation of the egg in the silk- 
worm, we may observe the following circumstances: 
First, many of the ova are completely formed, and covered 
with a hard shell, before copulation : secondly, the animals 
are a vast while in the act of copulation : and thirdly, the bags 
at the anus are filled during the time of copulation. From the 
first observation it appears, that the egg can receive the male 
influence through the hard or horny part of the shell. To 
know how far the whole, or only a part of the eggs, were im- 
pregnated by each copulation, I made the following expe- 
riments.* I took a female just emerged out of her cell, and put 
* All these experiments on the silk-moth were begun in the summer 1767, and re- 
peated by Mr. Bell in the year 1770, 
