r size of
the sexual parts of the male.

You wish, my dear Sir, that I should suggest some new experiments on
these industrious republicans. In doing so, I shall take the greater
pleasure and interest, as I know to what extent you possess the valuable
art of combining ideas, and of deducing from this combination results
adapted to the discovery of new facts. A few at this moment occur to me.

It may be proper to attempt the artificial fecundation of a virgin
queen, by introducing a little of the male's prolific fluid with a
pencil, and at the same time observing every precaution to avoid error.
Artificial fecundation, you are aware, has already succeeded in more
than one animal.

To ascertain that the queen, which has left the hive for impregnation,
is the same that returns to deposit her eggs, you will find it necessary
to paint the thorax with some varnish that resists humidity. It will
also be right to paint the thorax of a considerable number of workers in
order to discover the duration of their life. This is a more secure
method than slight mutilations.

For hatching the worm, the egg must be fixed almost vertically by one
end near the bottom of the cell. Is it true, that it is unproductive
unless fixed in this manner? I cannot determine the fact; and therefore
leave it to the decision of experiment.

I formerly mentioned to you that I had long doubted the real nature of
the small ovular substances deposited by queens in the cells, and my
inclination to suppose them minute worms not yet begun to expand. Their
elongated figure seems to favour my suspicions. It would therefore be
proper to watch them with the utmost assiduity, from the instant of
production until the period of exclusion. If the integument bursts,
there can be no doubt that these minute substances are real eggs.

I return to the mode of operating copulation. The height that the queen
and the males rise to in the air prevent us from seeing what passes
between them. On that account, the hive should be put into an apartment
with a very lofty ceiling. M. de Reaumur's experiment of confining a
queen with several males in a glass vessel, merits repetition; and if,
instead of a vessel, a glass tube, some inches in diameter and several
feet long, were used, perhaps something satisfactory might be
discovered.

You have had the fortune to observe the small queens mentioned by the
Abbe Needham, but which he never saw. It will be of great importance to
d