they attain to the state of perfect insects on the twenty-fourth day.
We may briefly notice here the statement of Huber respecting the order in which the different kinds of eggs are arranged in the ovarium of the Queen, and the law which regulates her laying. He says, that "nature does not allow the Queen the choice of the eggs she is to lay;" that "it is ordained she shall, at a certain time of the year, produce those of males, and, at another time, the eggs of workers; an order which cannot be inverted;" that "the eggs are not indiscriminately mixed in the ovaries of the Queen, but arranged so that at a particular season she can lay only a certain kind;" that "she can lay no male eggs until those of the workers, occupying the first place in the oviducts, are discharged."[1] We do not mean to question this statement, as holding true generally, but we think it made in terms too unqualified, and that there are palpable and frequent exceptions. He has himself acknowledged elsewhere that a Queen hatched in spring will sometimes lay fifty or sixty eggs of males during the course of the ensuing summer, and we have repeatedly witnessed the fact. Now, this takes place only in certain circumstances, and under certain conditions, namely, that the family of the Queen so laying shall have been a very early swarm, that it shall abound in population, and that the season shall be genial, and the secretion of honey in the flowers plentiful. In such a favourable juncture of circumstances, it almost invariably happens
- ↑ Huber, 44 and 136.
