gave him credit for the reality of the discovery; but further and more minute observation convinced him that it was illusory, and that what he, as well as Debraw had taken for seminal fluid, was nothing more than light reflected from the bottoms of the cells, when illuminated by the sun's rays. Moreover, it did not escape the acute mind of Huber, that eggs were laid and larvæ hatched, when there were no drones in existence, viz. between the months of September and April. The two hypotheses just mentioned, accounted satisfactorily, to their supporters, for the prodigious disproportion in the number of the sexes. But Huber made the experiment of confining the queen and rigidly excluding every male from a hive; nay more, he carefully examined every comb, and satisfied himself that there was neither male nymph nor worm present; and lest it should be supposed that the fertilizing fluid might be imported from other hives, he totally confined the bees, on two occasions, and still the eggs were prolific; which proves clearly that their fertility must have depended upon the previous impregnation of the queen. The analogy of wasps is indeed admitted, by Huish, to discountenance the opinion which he entertains in common with Maraldi and Debraw. The queen wasp alone, survives the winter, and deposits her first eggs in the ensuing spring in combs of her own construction. Here then impregnation must have taken place in the preceding autumn, whilst the eggs were in the ovaria. It was the opinion of Hattorf, Schirach, and probably also of Bonner, that the queen-bee impregnated herself; but this opinion is too extravagant to require serious refutation: it arose probably, from their making experiments upon queens taken indiscriminately from the hives, and which had previously been impregnated. This no doubt misled Debraw, who, without knowing it, had chosen for experiment some queens that had had commerce with the males. The experiments of Huber were made upon virgin-queens, with whose history he was acquainted from the moment of their leaving their cells. In the course of his experiments he found that the queens were never impregnated, so long as they remained in the interior of the hive; but that _impregnation always takes place in the open air_, at a time when the heat has induced the drones to issue from the hive; on which occasions, the queen soars high in the air, love being the motive for the only distant journey she ever takes. "The rencontre and copulation of the queen with the drone take place exterior to the hive," says Lombard, "and whilst they are on the wing." They are similarly constituted with the whole family of flies. A corresponding circumstance may also be noted with respect to the queen-ant; and Bonnet, in his _Contemplations de la Nature_, has observed that _she_ is always impregnated whilst she is on the wing. The dragon-flies copulate as they fly through the air, in which state they have the appearance of a double animal.