THE LONDON REVIEW, FOR SEPTEMBER, 1777. Philofophical Tranfactions, of the Royal Society of London. Vol. LXVII. Part I. For the Year 1777. 7s. 6d. Davis. The firft Article, in this volume, is a very remarkable, though not fingular, cafe of a woman's living for feveral years without meat or drink drawn up by Dr. Mackenzie phyfician at New Tarbat, and communicated by the Right Hon. James Stewart Mackenzie, Lord Privy Seal of Scotland. The cafe is well attefted, and what renders it the more extraordinary is that the patient, after long remaining bent double and bed-ridden, in the most deplorable fituation, recovered fo much, as to be able to walk tolerably upright, and to fubfift on the fuftenance of an infant. Article the Second, relates to the practice of washing and rubbing the ftems of trees, to promote their annual increase: a practice recommended by the celebrated Dr. Hales and Mr. Evelyn. The experiment, here related, was contained in a letter, from Mr. Marsham, to the Bishop of Bath and Wells; and is as follows. "In the fpring, as foon as the buds began to fwell, I washed my tree round from the ground to the beginning of the head; viz. be tween thirteen and fourteen feet in height. This was done first with water and a stiff fhoe-brush, until the tree was quite cleared of the mofs and dirt; then I only washed it with a coarfe flannel. I repeated the washing three, four, or five times a week, during all the dry time of the fpring and the fore-part of the fummer; but after the rains were frequent, I very feldom washed. The unwashed tree, whofe growth I VOL. VI. propofed X propofed to compare with it, was (at five feet from the ground) before the last year's increase, 3 ft. 7 in.ths; and in the autumn, after the year's growth was compleated, 3 ft. 9 in.th; viz. increafe 1 in. ths. The washed tree was laft fpring 3 ft. 7 in. ths, and in the autumn it was 3 ft. 9 in. 7ths; viz. increase 2 in.ths, that is, onetenth of an inch above double the increase of the unwashed tree. As the difference was fo great, and as fome unknown accident might have injured the growth of the unwashed tree, I added the year's increase of five other beeches of the fame age (viz. all that I had measured), and found the aggregate increase of the fix unwashed beeches to be 9 in. ths, which, divided by fix, gives one inch and five-tenths and an half for the growth of each tree; fo the gain by washing is nine-tenths and an half. To make the experiment fairly, I fixed on two of my largest beeches, fown in 1741, and tranfplanted into a grove in 1749. The washed tree had been, from the first year, the largest plant till the year 1767, when its rival became and continued the largest plant, until I began to wash the other: therefore I fixed on the less thriving tree as the fairest trial." Article the Third, is curious and entertaining, relative to a fubject much controverted by naturalifts; the propagation of bees. We fhall therefore extract the procefs of the whole experiment, with the writer's previous remarks. * "The republic of bees has at all times gained universal esteem and admiration: their culture, an object fo worthy of our attention, has attracted and still does engage that of many of the learned, and has ar rived at a confiderable degree of improvement of late years; but their mode of propagating their fpecies feems to this day to have baffled the ingenuity of ages in their attempts to difcover it. The most skilful naturalifts have been ftrangely mifled in their opinion, that the bees, as well as the other tribes of animals, are perpetuated by copulation; though they acknowledge that they have never been able to detect them in the act. Pliny, who was likewife of the fame opinion, that in this parti cular they do not differ from other animals, obferves, "Apium coitus vifus eft nunquam." Swammerdam, that fagacious obferver, having never been able to difcover it, entertained a notion, that the female of queen bee was fecundated without copulation; that it was fufficient for her to be near the males; that a vivifying aura, exhaling from the body of the males, and abforbed by the female, might impregnate her eggs. At last the incomparable Reaumur thought he had in a great measure removed the veil, and brought their manner of generating nearly to a proof. This part of phyfics has been the principal object of my refcatches for feveral years pait, having been infenfibly engaged in it by the pleasure 1 took in fo curious an inquiry; and although this purfuit has been attended with more difficulties and embarrafiments than can be well imagined, I have not been difcouraged, and have carefully avoided launching into conjectures. To introduce a new fyftem in the doctrine of bees, which in a great measure contradicts all *Mr. John Debraw, Apothecary to Addenbrooke's Hofpital at Cambridge. former former received opinions, requires, previous to its appearance, every fanction the various experiments, fuccefsfully repeated, can poffibly give it. The refults of thofe experiments, made all in glass-hives, which carry with them an entire evidence, afford fufficient reafons tó affert, that bees belong to that clafs of animals among which, although they have sexes, a true copulation cannot be proved; and that their ova, like the fpawn of fishes, moft probably owe their fecundation to an impregnation from the males, as will appear in the fequel of this narrative. "I am not a little pleased to find that the celebrated Maraldi had fuch a potion, and I lament his neglecting to confirm it. He fays, in his Obfervations upon Bees, in the Hiftory of the Academy of Sciences for the year 1712, p. 332: Nous n'avons pu découvrir jufqu'à present de quelle maniere je fait cette fecondation, fi c'eft dans le corps de la femelle, ou bien fi c'eft à la maniere des poiffons, après que la femelle a pose jes œufs : ia matiere blanchâtre dont l'auf eft environné au fond de l'alvéole peu de temps après sa naissance, femble conforme à la derniere opinion, auffi-bien que les remarques faites plufieurs fois d'un grand nombre d'œufs qui font reftés infeconds au fond de l'alvéole autour defquels nous n'avons point vú cette matiere. "We never yet were able to discover in what manner "this fecundation is performed; whether it is in the body of the fe"male, or whether it is after the manner of fishes, after the female or "queen-bee has depofited her eggs: that liquid whitish fubftance, "with which each egg is furrounded at the bottom of the cell a little "while after its being laid, feemingly establishing this laft opinion, as "well as the frequent remarks made of a great number of eggs remaining barren in the cell, round which we could not fee the abovementioned whitish fubftance." "This ingenious naturalift, by a nice examination of the structure of the drones, had, as well as Swammerdam, difcovered fome refemblances to the male organs of generation; and from thence conjectured, they were the males of the bee-infect; but he owns, with the reft, that he never could difcover them in the act of copulation. "Having ftood the trials of fo many prying eyes in every age, the bees, as has been obferved by an ingenious author, had gained the character of an inviolable chatlity, till Reaumur blafted their reputation. He makes the queen no better than a Meffalina *; though he could fee no more than what would raise a mere jealousy or generate fufpicions. "In order to be the better understood in the relation of my own experiments on the fecundation of bees, I here premise the outlines of the opinions adopted by the above-mentioned naturalifts on that head. They affert that the queen is the only female in the hive, and the mother of the next generation; that the drones are the males by which she is fecundated; and that the working bees, or bees that collect wax on the flowers, that knead it and form from it the combs and cells which they afterwards fill with honey, are of neither sex. "But of late Mr. Schirach, a German naturalift, has given us a very different view of the claffes that constitute the republic of bees, in an ingenious publication in his own language, under the title of The * Vid. JUVENAL, Sat. vi, ver. 128. X 2 Natural Natural Hiftory of the Queen of the Bees, which has been fince tranf lated into French; from which I beg leave to relate the author's doctrine with regard to the working-bees only; the quality and functions of the drones being points which do not appear to be yet fettled by Mr Schirach himself. He affirms, that all the common bees are females in difguife, in which the organs that diftinguish the fex, and particularly the ovaria, are obliterated, or at least, through their exceffive minuteness, have not yet been obferved: that every one of those bees in the earlier period of its existence is capable of becoming a queen-bee, if the whole community fhould think proper to nurse it in a particular manner, and raise it to that rank. In short, that the queenbee lays only two kinds of eggs; viz. those that are to produce the drones, and thofe from which the working-bees are to proceed. "The trials made by Mr. Schirach seem to evince the truth of his conclufions in the most fatisfactory manner, fingular as they appear to be at firft fight; and indeed in my own judgement, from the conftant happy refult of my numerous experiments, which I began near two years before Mr. Schirach's publication, and repeated every feafon fince, I am enabled to pronounce on their reality. Chance, I own, befriended me in that discovery, whilst I was most anxiously endeavouring to ascertain the ufe of drones. It was in the fpring of the year 1770, that I for the first time difcovered what Maraldi had only conjectured, I mean the impregnation of the eggs by the males, and that I was made acquainted with the difference of fize in the drones or males obferved by Maraldi in his Obfervations upon Bees, inferted in the History of the Royal Academy of Sciences for the year 1712, p. 333. in these words: "Nous avons trouvé depuis peu une grande quantité de bourdons, beaucoup plus petits que ceux que nous avions remarqué auparavant, et qui ne furpaffent point la grandeur des petites abeilles; de forte qu'il n'auroit pas été afe de les diftinguer dans cette ruche des abeilles ordinaires, fans le grand nombre que nous y en avons trouvé. Il fe pourroit bien faire que dans les ruches où l'on n'a pas trouvé de gros bourdons, il y en cut de ces petits, et qu'ils y aient été confondus avec le reste des abeilles, lorfque nous ne favions pas encore qu'il y en eût de cette taille. "We have of late found a great quantity of drones much smaller than those we had formerly ob ferved, and which do not exceed in fize the common bees; fo that "it would not have been eafy to distinguish them in that hive from "the common bees, had not the quantity of them been very confiderable. It might certainly have happened that in those hives, where have not been able to discover large drones, there were a great "number of thofe little ones, which may have been intermixed among "common bees when we were yet ignorant that any fuch finall drones "were exifting." we "Reaumur himself, p. 591. of his Natural History of Infects, fays, We have likewife found drones that were no bigger than the com"mon bees." "They have notwithstanding efcaped the obfervation of Mr. Schirach, and of his friend Mr. Hattorf member of an Academy in Lufatia, who, in a memoir he prefented in the year 1769, annihilates entirely the ufe of ones in a hive; and advances this fingular opinion, that the the queen-bee of a hive lays eggs which produce young ones, without having any communication with the drones. For what purpose should wife nature then have furnished the drones with that large quantity of feminal liquor? To what ufe fo large an apparatus of fecundating organs, fo well defcribed by Reaumur and Maraldi? * "But I beg leave to remark, that those gentlemen seem to have drawn too hafty conclufions from their experiments, in rejecting the drones as bearing no fhare in the propagation of those infects. Their obfervations, that hives are peopled at a time of the year when there are no drones in being, is no ways conclufive; as it is evident, that they had feen none but drones of a large fize, their filence on the difference in the fize of them justifying my remark. But to refume the narrative of my experiments: I had watched my glafs-hives with indefatigable attention from the moment the bees, among which I had taken care to leave a large number of drones, were put into them, to the time of the queen laying her eggs, which generally happens the fourth or fifth day, I obferved the firft or fecond day (always before the third) from the time the eggs are placed in the cells, that a great number of bees, fastening themselves to one another, hung down in the form of a curtain from the top to the bottom of the hive, in a fimilar manner they had done before at the time the queen depofited her eggs; an operation which (if we may conjecture at the instincts of infects) feems contrived to hide what is tranfacting: be that as it will, it anfwered the purpose of informing me that fomething was going forward. In fact, I prefently after perceived feveral bees, the fize of which through this thick veil (if I may fo exprefs myfelf) I could not rightly diftinguish, inferting the pofterior part of their bodies each into a cell, and finking into it, where they continued but a little while. After they had retired, I faw plainly with the naked eye a fmall quantity of a whitish liquor left in the angle of the bafis of each cell, containing an egg it was lefs liquid than honey, and had no fweet tafte at all. Within a day after, I found this liquor abforbed into the embryo, which on the fourth day is converted into a small worm, to which the working-bees bring a little honey for nourishment, during the first eight or ten days after its birth. After that time they ceafe to feed them; for they fhut up the cells, where thefe embryos, continue inclofed for ten days more, during which time they ur ergo various changes too tedious here to defcribe." Art. 4. Contains an account of a Portrait of Copernicus, prefented to the Royal Society by Dr. Wolf of Dantzick. "The hiftory of this portrait is as follows. It was formerly in the collection of Saxe Gotha, where it was always confidered as an original, which is even said to appear from the archives of that court, and is the more probable, as the prince-bishop of Warmia, who obtained it from the late duke of Saxe Gotha, was too good a connoiffeur and too cautious to be deceived in this refpect. That bishop being at Gotha in the year 1735, obferved this portrait in the gallery of that palace; the proofs that were produced of its authenticity made him very defirous to Glass-hives were used in preference to boxes, for a purpof oo obvious to need explaining. 5 acquire |