34 
THIS HIVE AND IIONEY-BEE. 
and experiments of his faithful assistants being dailj 
reported, many inquiries and suggestions were made b) 
him, which might not have suggested themselves had he 
possessed the use of his eyes. 
Few, like him, have such command of both time and 
money as to be able to prosecute on so grand a scale, for 
a series of years, the most costly experiments. Having 
repeatedly verified his most important observations, I take 
great delight in holding him up to my countrymen as the 
Prince op Apiarians. 
To return to his discoveries on the impregnation of the 
queen-bee. By a long course of careful experiments, he 
ascertained that, like many other insects, she was fecund¬ 
ated in the open air and on the wing; and that the influ¬ 
ence of this connection lasts for several years, and proba¬ 
bly for life. He could, however, form no satisfactory con¬ 
jecture how eggs were fertilized which were not yet 
developed in her ovaries. Years ago, the celebrated Dr. 
John Hunter, and others, supposed that there must be a 
permanent receptacle for the male sperm, opening into 
the oviduct. Dzierzon, who must be regarded as one of 
the ablest contributors of modern times to Apiarian sci¬ 
ence, maintains this opinion, and states that he has found 
such a receptacle filled with a fluid resembling the semen 
of the drones. He does not seem to have demonstrated 
his discoveries by any microscopic examinations. 
In the Winter of 1851-2, I submitted for scientific 
examination several queen-bees to Dr. Joseph Lcidy, of 
Philadelphia, who has the highest reputation both at 
home and abroad, as a naturalist and microscopic anato¬ 
mist. He found in making his dissections a small globular 
sac, about ,g ol an inch in diameter, communicating with 
the oviduct, and filled with a whitish fluid; this fluid, 
when examined t nder the microscope, abounded in the 
