noise in the air, and hastened to put the bees into a hive prepared on purpose. The object of the experiment, notwithstanding this unexpected occurrence, was completely fulfilled; for, on examination of all the bees, I was convinced they had been conducted by the old queen, whom I had introduced on the 6th of the month, and who had been marked, by depriving her of one of her antennæ; and what was more, there was no other queen besides this one in the colony; but in the hive she had left I found several royal cells, close at the top, but open at the side, and quite empty; eleven more were sealed, and some others newly begun. No queen remained in the hive.

"My attention was now directed to the new swarm, which I watched during the winter and the following spring, and in April I had the satisfaction of seeing another swarm depart, with the same queen at its head who had conducted the former one the preceding May. This experiment, then, is positive and conclusive; and I have repeated it several times, with equal success. It therefore appears to be incontestable, that the old queen always conducts the first swarm, but never quits the hive before depositing eggs in the royal cells, from which other queens will be disclosed, after her departure, to succeed to her abandoned kingdom. These royal cells are prepared by the bees only while the queen is laying male eggs, which is attended by the remarkable fact, that after this laying terminates, her belly being considerably diminished, she can easily fly, whereas it is previously so heavy that she can hardly drag it along. It becomes necessary, therefore, that she should lay, in order to be in a state for undertaking her journey, as this may sometimes be of considerable length *." We are hence authorised to infer that the deposition of eggs, from once pairing, takes the queen-bee above a year.

* Huber on Bees, p. 149.

In the glow-worm (Lampyris noctiluca), again, we have ascertained, by numerous observations, that the laying takes place soon after pairing, and is completed within a day or two; but as the circumstances attending the pairing of these insects have given rise to an opinion very generally diffused, it may be proper to examine its validity. We refer to the beautiful light from which the creature derives its name, and which is believed to be peculiar to the female, for the purpose of guiding the darkling flight of the male. "This phosphorescent light," says Dumeril, "appears to be intended by nature as the lamp of love-the pharos the telegraph of the night, which scintillates and marks, in the silence of darkness, the spot appointed for the lovers' rendezvous * " "The female glow worm," say Kirby and Spence, "hangs out her lamp of love, and the male, led by it, wings his way to her tThe torch which the wingless female, doomed to crawl upon the grass, lights up at the approach of night, is a beacon which unerringly guides the vagrant male to her love-illumined form, however obscure the place of her abode ‡."

66

Upon this statement Mr. Knapp has engrafted the following ingenious and pretty theory respecting the structure of the male glow-worm, "Most creatures," says he, have their eyes so placed as to be enabled to see about them; or, as Hook says of the house-fly, to be circumspect animals;' but this male glow-worm has a contrivance by which any upward or side vision is prevented. Viewed when at rest, no portion of his eyes is visible, but the head is margined with a horny band, or plate, being a character of one of the genera of the order coleoptera, under which the eyes are situated. This prevents all upward vision; the blinds, or winkers, are so fixed at the sides of his eyes as greatly to impede the view of all lateral objects. The chief *Dict. des Sciences Naturelles, xxv. 216. + Intr. iv, 514.

‡ Ibid. ii. 428.

end of this creature, in his nightly peregrinations, is to seek his mate, always beneath him on the earth; and hence this apparatus appears designed to facilitate his search, confining his view entirely to what is before or below him. The first serves to direct his flight, the other presents the object of his pursuit; and as we commonly, and with advantage, place our hand over the brow, to obstruct the rays of light falling from above, which enables us to see clearer an object on the ground, so must the projecting hood of this creature converge the visual rays to a point beneath. This is a very curious provision for the purposes of the insect, if my conception of its design be reasonable. Possibly the same ideas may have been brought forward by others; but as I have not seen them, I am not guilty of any undue appropriation, and no injury can be done to the cause I wish to promote, by de-tailing again such beautiful and admirable contri

We are no less anxious to promote the cause advocated by the ingenious author than he can be; but in the instance in question he seems to have overlooked the circumstance, that the structure of the female glow-worm is precisely similar to that of the male, the head being not only covered with a broad plate which overshadows the eyes, but being retractile like that of the snail, a structure which, in her case, cannot be required for the purpose assigned by him to the male. A peculiarity which strikes us more remarkably, is the extraordinary magnitude of the eyes of the male, these being more than double, while the body is not above half the size of that of the female t.

It is a question indeed by no means decided, whether the light of the glow-worm is intended for the purpose popularly and poetically believed. We have * Journal of a Naturalist, 293, 1st edit.

+ J. R.

6 us. Head of male glow-worm.

recently verified in several instances the facts first stated by Baron de Geer, "that this insect shines in its infant state, in that of larva, and even after it has taken the form of a nymph. Now, as in the first of these states it cannot propagate, and still less in the second, with what design is the light displayed? It must serve some purpose yet unknown. The authors who have spoken of the male glow-worms say positively that they shine in the dark as well as females*." We have in two instances observed this luminosity of the male, which however is much more feeble than that of the female. Ray first discovered this *De Geer, Mémoires, iv. 44.

fact* in the common glow-worm, and Geoffroy and Müller give their testimony to its accuracy; while Illiger records it as occurring still more remarkably in two foreign species (Lampyris splendidula, and L. hemiptera). Kirby and Spence make an attempt to rebut the inferences drawn from these facts, by remarking that the circumstance of the male having the same luminous property, no more proves that the superior brilliancy of the female is not intended for conducting him to her, than the existence of nipples, and sometimes of milk in man, proves that the breast of woman is not meant for the support of her offspring t. But we do not see how the light in the male glow-worm can be thus compared with such decidedly sexual organs, though in the larva it may certainly be explained upon the principle of gradual development. Mr. Main thinks that the design of the light in the female is proved by the propensity of the males to fly towards light, and states that they have been seen in such numbers, as sometimes to cover a table round a lighted candle in an open room. But he surely forgets that gnats and moths do the same, although their females are not luminous.

In order to put this to a more certain test than a lighted candle, in July, 1830, we placed a number of female glow-worms in full light in an open shallow box, and after sun-set left it for about an hour on the sea-bank, near Hâvre de Grace where the insect abounds: but though there was here a concentrated blaze no males made their appearance; no, not though we afterwards carried the box about in all directions till near midnight, about which time White of Selborne observed the light to be extinguished, a circumstance also remarked by Shakspeare, who ascribes it to the male: Intr. ii. 429.

*Historia Insect. 81.