In connexion with this matter it is to be noted that the sperm of one drone (her only mate) is retained in an internal sac or pouch, alive and active, in the queen bee, for some four or five years, and is used by her in successive seasons for fertilizing her eggs. Similarly it is recorded by the late Lord Avery that a queen ant kept by him for fourteen years, without access to a male ant, retained to the end of that period the power of producing eggs which developed into worker ants. He concluded that the sperm received fourteen years before by this queen from a male ant remained all this time alive and ready for use in her sperm-receptacle or sac, since it has been shown that unfertilized eggs in these and allied insects produce only drones (males). Many strange and unwarranted beliefs persist because mankind prefers to accept an astonishing assertion as true rather than take the trouble to see whether it is so or not. Thus all antiquity and the later learned world wrangled about the very existence of Homer's city of Troy, until Schliemann said, "Don't talk! Dig!" and with childlike simplicity and directness uncovered ancient Troy. Thus the belief as to St. Swithin and his forty days of rain has been shown by the simple examination of the actual records of rainfall to be very far from the truth, since, though we often have a wet period in July and August, St. Swithin's Day is nearly as often free from rain in a wet season as the reverse. Forty days of rain very rarely indeed, in the South of England, have followed a wet St. Swithin's Day. The most amusing instance of the pricking of one of these bubbles of belief arose from the inquiry by some of the sham philosophers at the Court of King Charles II as to how it comes about that if a jar holding water be weighed, and then a live fish be placed therein without spilling any of the water, and the jar, with the fish and the water in it, be again weighed, there is found to be no increase in the observed weight. King Charles, it is said, made a bet that this was not so, and that there was nothing to explain. He referred the matter for decision to the newly founded "Royal Society for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge," which at other times he had asked to give him information as to the magic properties of the unicorn's horn and the cause of the movements of the recently imported "sensitive or humble plant." The believers in the marvellous disappearance of the weight of a fish placed in a bowl of water held forth at great length and gave ingenious reasons as to why this is so. But the King said, "Don't chatter; make trial!" And the weighing was done, in the King's presence, by some of the Fellows of the Royal Society. It was found that the weight of the jar with its contained water was increased when the fish was placed therein by exactly the number of ounces which the fish weighed when placed separately in the balance. So the King won his bet, and the sham philosophers were silenced.