It is hardly worth while saying anything about the proportion of the sexes in certain species and even groups of insects, for the males are unknown or very rare, and the females are parthenogenetic, that is, fertile without sexual union; examples of this are afforded by several of the Cynipidæ.[1] In all the gall-making Cynipidæ known to Mr. Walsh, the females are four or five times as numerous as the males; and so it is, as he informs me, with the gall-making Cecidomyiiæ (Diptera). With some common species of Saw-flies (Tenthredinæ) Mr. F. Smith has reared hundreds of specimens from larvæ of all sizes, but has never reared a single male; on the other hand, Curtis says,[2] that with certain species (Athalia), bred by him, the males were to the females as six to one; whilst exactly the reverse occurred with the mature insects of the same species caught in the fields. In the family of Bees, Hermann Müller,[3] collected a large number of specimens of many species, and reared others from the cocoons, and counted the sexes. He found that the males of some species greatly exceeded the females in number; in others the reverse occurred; and in others the two sexes were nearly equal. But as in most cases the males emerge from the cocoons before the females, they are at the commencement of the breeding-season practically in excess. Müller also observed that the relative number of the two sexes in some species differed much in different localities. But as H. Müller has himself remarked to me, these remarks must be received with some caution, as one sex might more easily escape observation than the other. Thus his brother Fritz Müller has noticed in Brazil that the two sexes of the same species of bee sometimes frequent different kinds of flowers. With respect to the Orthoptera, I know hardly anything about the relative number of the sexes: Körte,[4] however, says that out of 500 locusts which he examined, the males were to the females as five to six. With the Neuroptera, Mr. Walsh states that in many, but by no means in all the species of the Odonatous group, there is a great overplus of males: in the genus Hetærina, also, the males are generally at least four times as numerous as the females. In certain species in the genus Gomphus the males are equally in excess, whilst in two other species, the females are twice or thrice as numerous as the males. In some European species of Psocus thousands of females may be collected without a single male, whilst with other species of the same genus both sexes are common.[5] In England, Mr. MacLachlan has captured hundreds of the female Apatania muliebris, but has never seen the male; and of Boreus hyemalis only four or five males have been seen here.[6] With most of these species (excepting the Tenthredinæ) there is at present no evidence that the females are subject to parthenogenesis; and thus we see how ignorant we are of the causes of the apparent discrepancy in the proportion of the two sexes.
In the other Classes of the Articulata I have been able to collect still- ↑ Walsh in 'The American Entomologist,' vol. i. 1869, p. 103. F. Smith, 'Record of Zoological Literature,' 1867, p. 328.
- ↑ 'Farm Insects,' pp. 45–46.
- ↑ 'Anwendung der Darwinschen Lehre Verh. d. n. V. Jahrg. xxiv.'
- ↑ 'Die Strich, Zug oder Wanderhenschrecke,' 1828, p. 20.
- ↑ 'Observations on N. American Neuroptera,' by H. Hagen and B. D. Walsh, 'Pro. Ent. Soc. Philadelphia,' Oct. 1863, pp. 168, 223, 239.
- ↑ 'Pro. Ent. Soc. London,' Feb. 17, 1868.
