188 Mr. Hunter's Observations on Bees. 
tion, opened them, exposing their seminal ducts, and after 
cutting into these, collected their semen with a hair pencil : 
with this semen I covered the ova, as soon as they passed out 
of the vagina. The card with these eggs, having a written 
account of the experiment upon it, I kept in a box by itself. 
In the ensuing season, eight of the ova hatched at the same 
time with others naturally impregnated. Thus, then, I ascer- 
tained that the eggs could be impregnated by art, after they 
were laid. 
The ova laid by females that had not been impregnated, did 
not stick where they were laid : so that the semen would 
appear not only to impregnate the ova, but also to be the 
means of attaching them. 
To know whether that bag in the female silk-moth, which 
increased at the time of copulation, was filled with the semen 
of the male, I made the following experiment : 
EXPERIMENT II. 
I took a female moth, as soon as she had escaped from the 
pod, and kept her on a card till she began to lay. I then took 
females that were fully impregnated before they began to lay, 
and dissected out that bag which I supposed to be the recep- 
tacle for the male semen ; and wetting a camel hair pencil 
with this matter, covered the ova as soon as they passed out 
of the vagina. These ova were laid carefully on the clean 
card, and kept till the ensuing season, when they all hatched 
at the same time with those naturally impregnated. 
This proves that this bag is the receptacle for the semen, 
and gradually decreases as the eggs are laid. 
