Page - 1464 - in The Complete Aristotle

case the facts about their leadership would be unreasonable), and that, while they suffer the kings to do no work as being their parents, they punish the drones as their children, for it is nobler to punish one’s children and those who have no work to perform. The fact that the leaders, being few, generate the bees in large numbers seems to be similar to what obtains in the generation of lions, which at first produce five, afterwards a smaller number each time at last one and thereafter none. So the leaders at first produce a number of workers, afterwards a few of their own kind; thus the brood of the latter is smaller in number than that of the former, but where Nature has taken away from them in number she has made it up again in size. Such appears to be the truth about the generation of bees, judging from theory and from what are believed to be the facts about them; the facts, however, have not yet been sufficiently grasped; if ever they are, then credit must be given rather to observation than to theories, and to theories only if what they affirm agrees with the observed facts. A further indication that bees are produced without copulation is the fact that the brood appears small in the cells of the comb, whereas, whenever insects are generated by copulation, the parents remain united for a long time but produce quickly something of the nature of a scolex and of a considerable size. Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have. For the so-called ‘mothers’ generate the young and mould the first part of the combs, but they generate by copulation with one another, for their union has often been observed. As for all the differences of each of these kind from one another and from bees, they must be investigated with the aid of the illustrations to the Enquiries. < div id=“section42” class=“section” title=“11”> 11 Having spoken of the generation of all insects, we must now speak of the testacea. Here also the facts of generation are partly like and partly unlike those in the other classes. And this is what might be expected. For compared with animals they resemble plants, compared with plants they resemble animals, so that in a sense they appear to come into being from semen, but in 1464