Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen.
- John Hunter
- Date:
- 1840
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.
460/494 page 452
![just as they were laid. The following experiments were made on the silk-moth. Experiment I. I took a female moth, as soon as she escaped . from her pod, and kept her carefully by herself upon a clean card, till she began to lay ; then I took males that were ready for copula- tion, opened them, exposing their seminal ducts, and after cutting into these, collected their semen with a hair pencil: with this semen I covered the ova, as soon as they passed out of the vagina. The | card with these eggs, having a written account of the experiment upon it, | kept in a box by itself. In the ensuing season eight of the ova hatched at the same time with others naturally impreg- nated. ‘Thus then I ascertained that the eggs could be impregnated by art, after they were laid.* The ova laid by females that had not been impregnated did not stick where they were laid; so that the semen would appear not only to impregnate the ova, but also to be the means of attaching them. To know whether that bag in the female silk-moth which increased at the time of copulation, was filled with the semen of the male, I made the following experiment. Experiment II. J took a female moth, as soon as she had escaped from the pod, and kept her on a card till she began to lay. I then took females that were fully impregnated before they began to lay, and dissected out that bag which I supposed to be the receptacle for the male semen; and wetting a camel-hair pencil with this mat- ter, covered the ova as soon as they passed out of the vagina. These ova were laid carefully on the clean card, and kept till the ensuing season, when they all hatched at the same time with those naturally impregnated. This proves that this bag is the receptacle for the semen, and gradually decreases as the eggs are laid. Of the Sting of the Bee. I have observed that it is only the queen and the labourers that have stings ; and this provision of a sting is perhaps as curious a circumstance as any attending the bee, and probably is one of the characters of the bee tribe. _The apparatus itself is of a very curious construction, fitted for in- flicting a wound, and at the same time conveying a poison into that wound. The apparatus consists of two piercers, conducted in a groove, or director, which appears to be ifself the sting. This groove is somewhat thick at its base, but terminates in a point; it is articulated to the last scale of the upper side of the abdomen by thirteen thin scales, six on each side, and one behind the rectum. These scales inclose, as it were, the rectum or anus all round; they can hardly be said to be articulated to each other, only at- * [This circumstance was proved, as regards the ova of fishes, by Gleditsch. See Mémoires de ]’Acad. de Bees 1764.] Site tae](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33292292_0460.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
