attitude just described, always produces a paralysing effect upon the bees. Bees, when deprived of their queen, have the power of selecting one or more grubs of workers, and converting them into queens. To effect this, each of the promoted grubs has a royal cell or cradle formed for it, by having three contiguous common cells thrown into one; two of the three grubs that occupy those cells are sacrificed, and the remaining one is liberally fed with royal jelly. This _royal jelly_ is a pungent food prepared by the working bees, exclusively for the purpose of feeding such of the larvæ as are destined to become candidates for the honours of royalty, whether it be their lot to assume them or not. It is more stimulating than the food of ordinary bees, has not the same mawkish taste, and is evidently acescent. The royal larvæ are supplied with it rather profusely, and there is always some of it left in the cell, after their transformation. Schirach, who was secretary to the Apiarian Society in Upper Lusatia and vicar of Little Bautzen, may be regarded as the discoverer, or rather as the promulgator of this fact; and his experiments, which were also frequently repeated by other members of the Lusatian Society, have been amply confirmed by those of Huber and Bonner. Mr. Keys was a violent sceptic upon this subject (See his communications to the Bath Society); so likewise was Mr. Hunter (_Vide_ Philosophical Transactions). But notwithstanding the criticisms and ridicule of the former, and the sarcastic strictures of the latter, the sex of workers is now established beyond all doubt. The fact is said to have been known long before Schirach wrote: M. Vogel and Signor Monticelli, a Neapolitan professor, have both asserted this; the former states it to have been known upwards of fifty years, the latter a much longer period; he says that the Greeks and Turks in the Ionian Islands are well acquainted with it, and that in the little Sicilian island of Favignana, the art of _producing queens_ has been known from very remote antiquity; he even thinks that it was no secret to the Greeks and Romans, though, as Messrs. Kirby and Spence observe, had the practice been common, it would surely have been noticed by Aristotle or Pliny. The result of Schirach's experiments was that all workers were originally females, but that their organs of generation were obliterated, merely because the germs of them were not developed; their being fed and treated in a particular manner, in their infancy or worm state, being necessary, in his opinion, to effect that development. Subsequent experiments conducted under the auspices of Huber, have shown, however, that the organs are not entirely obliterated.