90 
ARTIFICIAL QUEEN'S. 
the new nutriment may cause to grow in all directions. 
It furnishes a surprising evidence of the slow degrees 
by which scientific facts make their way, if not essen- 
tial to general utility, when w r e consider that to this 
day, the knowledge of this singularity in the natural 
history of this insect, is confined almost exclusively 
to apiarians, and even rejected by some of them. 
It has, however, been confirmed by so many experi- 
ments instituted by many different individuals, that 
no unprejudiced mind can withhold its assent from 
its truth. Extraordinary, however, as this fact is, 
it is not more so than many others which have not 
attracted our particular notice, merely because they 
are familiar to us. “ If we preserve the seed of a 
plant,” says Feburier, “ for a series of years, and 
supply it with different nourishment and soil, and 
bestow upon it different treatment from that which 
w r as destined for it by nature, vve destroy its powers 
of fecundity ; the flower no longer possesses pistils 
or stamina, petals replace them, and announce the 
sterility of the plant." Something analogous to this 
holds true, it is said, in the case of one of our domestic 
quadrupeds. We find the twin-calf, stinted as it has 
been for room in the ovarium of its mother, and the 
recipient of but half the nourishment which would 
otherwise have fallen to its share, becomes in after 
years a barren cow. In the case of the bee, “ the egg 
of a worker, placed in a royal cell, only produces 
an insect which has its powers more fully developed, 
in proportion to the ampler space which it occupies, 
but it acquires no new powers. The germ of the ovary 
