Note 5 — CHAP. VI. OF THE RELATION OF ANTS WITH THE PUCERONS AND GALL INSECTS.

Although these insects are both oviparous and viviparous, yet this is not the greatest singularity in their history, for they will produce, as fully confirmed by Bonnet and other celebrated naturalists, several young in succession, without intercourse with the male insect. The common gnat, it is asserted, will produce young, and these, in their turn, will give birth to others, down to the sixth generation, without further intercourse with the male. Huber, the father of our present author, so well known to us from his extensive discoveries in natural history, thinks, that one impregnation is sufficient to render fertile all the eggs which a queen bee may produce in the whole course of her life, usually about two years. And Mons. Audibert has known a female spider produce young, for several successive generations, from one single impregnation of the male. The circumstance of the Aphides, or Pucerons, being oviparous or viviparous, seems to depend upon the prevailing temperature. Mr. Curtis having remarked the same species to be oviparous in the open air, which when sheltered from the wind, in a green-house, was viviparous. The wood-louse, it has been remarked, sometimes produces its young in the state of an egg, sometimes brings them forth perfectly alive. Redi also mentions a similar circumstance, in his work on the generation of insects, in reference to some of the flies he describes.—T.