insects; in Stainton’s Entom. Annual (1861, p. 39) you will find good proof that worker wasps can & do generate worker wasps.² The demonstration is simple. A nest containing a single female & several workers is in early spring deprived of the female; & it is found that the building of fresh cells & the production of fresh workers therein goes on as successfully as if the mother-female had remained in the nest. With regard to your ⁠⟨⁠    ⁠⟩⁠

⁠⟨⁠    ⁠⟩⁠ which D^r. Velie assures me never builds a nest for itself, & the books say the same? As with your Cuckoo, the other species belonging to the same genus have no such parasitic habits.³

I enclose you a copy of a recent Lecture by Agassiz, the marked portions in which I thought would interest you. I suspect he has mistaken the deposits left by floating Ice-bergs for true Glaciers. His theory about Glaciers moving on level ground might do for high northern latitudes⁴ ⁠⟨⁠    ⁠⟩⁠

Editing the Practical Entomologist does undoubtedly take up a good deal of my time, but I also pick up a good deal of information of real scientific value from its correspondents.⁵ Besides, this great American nation has hitherto had a supreme contempt for Natural History, because they have hitherto believed that it has nothing to do with the dollars and cents. After hammering away at them for a year or two, I have at last succeeded in touching the ‘pocket nerve’ in Uncle Sam’s body, and he is gradually being galvanised into the conviction that science has the power to make him richer. ⁠⟨⁠    ⁠⟩⁠

⁠⟨⁠    ⁠⟩⁠ You cannot have the remotest conception of the ideas of even our best-educated Americans as to the pursuit of science. I never yet met with a single one who could be brought to understand how or why a man should pursue science for its own pure and holy sake.