t, I shall owe it to some happy chance
for which I must wait, or rather watch, patiently. Towards the end of my
investigations, I heard of a German theory which relates to the Hive-bee
and comes from Dzierzon, the apiarist. (Johann Dzierzon, author of
"Theorie und Praxis des neuen Bienenfreundes."--Translator's Note.) If I
understand it aright, according to the very incomplete documents which I
have before me, the egg, as it issues from the ovary, is said already to
possess a sex, which is always the same; it is originally male; and it
becomes female by fertilization. The males are supposed to proceed from
non-fertilized eggs, the females from fertilized eggs. The Queen-bee
would thus lay female eggs or male eggs according as she fertilized them
or not while they were passing into her oviduct.

Coming from Germany, this theory cannot but inspire me with profound
distrust. As it has been given acceptance, with rash precipitancy, in
standard works, I will overcome my reluctance to devoting my attention
to Teutonic ideas and will submit it not to the test of argument, which
can always be met by an opposite argument, but to the unanswerable test
of facts.

For this optional fertilization, determining the sex, the mother's
organism requires a seminal reservoir which distils its drop of sperm
upon the egg contained in the oviduct and thus gives it a feminine
character, or else leaves it its original character, the male character,
by refusing it that baptism. This reservoir exists in the Hive-bee.
Do we find a similar organ in the other Hymenoptera, whether
honey-gatherers or hunters? The anatomical treatises are either silent
on this point or, without further enquiry, apply to the order as a whole
the data provided by the Hive-bee, however much she differs from the
mass of Hymenoptera owing to her social habits, her sterile workers and
especially her tremendous fertility, extending over so long a period.

I at first doubted the universal presence of this spermatic receptacle,
having failed to find it under my scalpel in my former investigations
into the anatomy of the Sphex-wasps and some other game-hunters. But
this organ is so delicate and so small that it very easily escapes the
eye, especially when our attention is not specially directed in search
of it; and, even when we are looking for it and it only, we do not
always succeed in discovering it. We have to find a globule attaining
in many cases hardly as much as a mill