20 
BRITISH BEES. 
fecundating property of the semen in animals, and, like 
them, produces spermatozoa, a fact corroborated by the 
researches of Robert Brown, Mirbel, and other dis¬ 
tinguished vegetable physiologists.* 
We are told that the cells of Hylceus , or Prosopis, and 
of Ceratina are supplied with a semifluid honey. It is 
very doubtful if Hylceus collects its own store, but that 
Ceratina does I have the authority of an exact observer 
(Mr. Thwaites) to verify it, for he has caught this in¬ 
sect with pollen on its posterior legs, which the long 
hair covering the tibia is intended for. What may be 
the nature of this semifluid honey ? It is questionable 
if the larva could be nurtured upon honey alone with¬ 
out the admixture of pollen, thus contradicting analogies 
presumable from ample verification in nature’s processes. 
How, too, does it become semifluid? It is the property 
of honey, at a certain temperature, to be very fluid, and 
this is doubtless the temperature that prevails within 
the receptacle of the larva during the time of the opera¬ 
tions of the bees. 
Its semifluid consistency could then apparently be 
produced only by some more solid admixture, which, if 
not of pollen, of what can it be? This, even in small 
quantities, might, upon the bursting of its vesicles, have 
the power of thickening the fluent honey to the neces¬ 
sary consistency. 
But a bee without polliniferous organs cannot collect 
pollen, and the instance of the hive bee, which collects 
honey in superabundance, feeding its larva with the bee- 
* Might not, by parity of inference, the milt of fishes, such as the 
herring, mackerel, etc., be a useful food in cases of consumption, both 
from the iodine necessarily existing in it, and also from its doubtless 
nutritive nature F 
