204? OLFACTORY AND BREATHING ORGANS. 



on which it was regaling, beat its wings with violence, and 

 would have flown off but for a removal of the offence. On 

 repetition of the experiment the same effect ensued : the angry 

 Bee fanning itself with its wings, as if to blow away the un- 

 welcome odour. 



For all this, neither arguments nor facts are wanting to 

 make it seem probable that insects in general are desti- 

 tute of noses, or at least of the noses proper, usually recog- 

 nised as such The following is a plausible reason on tins side 

 of the question. Smelling and breathing, as every one knows 

 by his own inspiration, are faculties very intimately connected ; 

 it would hardly seem, indeed, that the former could be carried 

 on without the latter. Now insects, it is well known, do not 

 breathe through the head at all, but usually through a row of 

 pipes running along each side of the trunk, termed spiracles 

 or breathing tubes, of which the mouths are clearly dis- 

 coverable in grubs and caterpillars. To these spiracles, then, 

 as organs of breathing, has been assigned also the office of 

 smell ; and though this doctrine and the above may appear, at 

 first sight, totally at variance, perhaps the truth, when clearly 

 ascertained, may nearly reconcile their difference, inasmuch as 

 the last or upper pair of spiracles, though not seated in the 

 head, approach it very closely. The spiracles in a Bee's neck 

 are said to be placed at the origin of the tongue. 



No one can observe and consider the works of Insects 

 without feeling pretty well assured that their sense of 



