That _the working bees are females_ is clear from the circumstance of their being known occasionally to lay eggs. This fact was first noticed by Riem, and was afterwards confirmed by the experiments of Huber, whose assistant, on one occasion seized a fertile worker in the very act of laying. It is a remarkable fact that these _fertile workers_ never lay any but _drones'_ eggs. This uninterrupted laying of drones' eggs was noticed by the Lusatian observers, as well as by the naturalist of the Palatinate. Bonnet, on referring to this fact, supposes there must have been small queens mixed with the workers upon which the experiments were made, whose office it was to lay male eggs in _all_ hives; for neither he nor the before-named observers imagined that the workers were ever fertile, though from the oft repeated experiments, just alluded to, they must have regarded them as females. Probably the fertility of these workers is occasioned by some royal jelly being casually dropped into their cells, when grubs, as they uniformly issue from cells adjoining those inhabited by grubs, that have been raised from the plebeian to the royal rank; of course therefore they are never found in any hives but those which have had the misfortune to lose their queen. Fertile workers appear smaller in the belly and more slender in the body than sterile workers, and this is the only external difference between them. If any further proof were required to establish the opinion that working bees are females, the question has been set at rest for ever, by _the dissections of Miss Jurine_, daughter of the distinguished naturalist of Geneva: what had eluded the scalpel and the microscope of that penetrating and indefatigable naturalist Swammerdam, was reserved for the still finer hand and more dexterous dissection of a lady. Miss Jurine, by adopting a particular method of preparing the object to be examined, brought into view the rudiments of the ovaria of the common working bee: her examinations were several times repeated, and always with success: in form, situation and structure, they were found to be perfectly analogous to those of the queen-bee, excepting that no ova could be distinguished in them. M. Cuvier, however, thinks that he has observed minute chaplets in common bees, resembling those in the oviducts of queens; an additional confirmation, if any were wanted, of the opinion that workers are females whose organization is not developed. Miss Jurine undertook the delicate task to which I have just referred, at the request of M. Huber, who speaks of her as a young lady who had devoted her time and the liberal gifts of nature to similar studies, and says that she already rivalled Lyonnet and Merian; but adds, "we had soon to deplore her loss." The research was first made to ascertain whether black bees, which, when they appear in a hive, are much persecuted, were exposed to this persecution in consequence of their sex exciting the jealousy of the queen.