egg-layer's

Updated: May 11, 2025

At the egg-layer's will, the receptacle bestows a tiny drop of its contents upon the matured ovule, when it reaches the oviduct, and you have a female egg; or else it withholds its spermatozoids and you have an egg that remains male, as it was at first. I readily admit it: the theory is very simple, lucid and seductive. But is it correct? That is another question.

Jean-Henri Fabre - Bramble-Bees and Others