GENERAL HISTORY OF BEES. 43 



velum of the spur upon it, removes, by the combined 

 action of the comb and the velum, all excrescences or 

 soilure from it, and this process it repeats until satisfied 

 with the cleanliness of the organ : and this it may be 

 frequently seen doing. This arrangement proves how 

 essential to the well-being of the insect is the condition 

 of its antennae, the sinus, or strigilis, or curry-comb, as 

 it may be called, being always adapted in size to the thick- 

 ness of the antennae, for insects being always both right- 

 and left-handed, they therefore use the limb on each side 

 to brush the antenna of that side. The palmse and other 

 joints of the tarsus of the fore legs are greatly dilated in 

 many males, or fringed externally with stiff setse, which 

 give it as efficient a dilatation as if it were the expansion 

 of its corneous substance. The anterior tarsi of the 

 females are likewise fringed with hair, to enable them to 

 sweep off and collect the pollen, and to assist also in the 

 construction and furnishing of their burrows. The in- 

 termediate tarsi are as well often very much extended 

 in the males, being considerably longer than those of the 

 other legs. The use of the claws at the apex of the tarsi 

 is evidently to enable the insect to cling to surfaces. 

 The manner in which the bee convevs either the 



V 



pollen, or other material it purposes carrying home, to 

 the posterior legs, or venter, which is to bear it, is very 

 curious. The rapidity of the motions of its legs is then 

 very great ; so great, indeed, as to make it very difficult 

 to follow them ; but it seems first to collect its material 

 gradually with its mandibles, from which the anterior 

 tarsi gather it, and that on each side passes successively 

 the grains of which it consists to the intermediate legs 

 by multiplicated scrapings and twistings of the limbs ; 

 this then passes it on by similar manoeuvres, and depo- 



