Social Insects. 39 



indeed might be expected when we consider the part they have 

 played in the development of flowers. While these experiments 

 seem to show that bine is the bees' favorite color, this does not 

 accord with Albert Miiller's experience in nature, nor with the 

 general experience of apiarians, who, if asked, would very gener 

 ally agree that bees show a preference for white flowers. 



TOUCH. The sense of touch is supposed to reside chiefly in 

 the antennae or feelers, though it requires but the simplest obser 

 vation to show that with soft-bodied insects the sense resides in 

 any portion of the body, very much as it does in other animals. 

 In short, this is the one sense which, in its manifestations, may 

 be conceded to resemble our own. Yet it is evidently more 

 specialized in the maxillary and labial palpi and the tongue than 

 in the antennas, in most insects. 



TASTE. Very little can be positively proved as to the sense of 

 taste in insects. Its existence may be confidently predicated 

 from the acute discrimination which most monophagous species 

 exercise in the choice of their food, and its location may be as 

 sumed to be the mouth or some of the special trophial organs 

 which have no counterpart among vertebrates. Indeed certain 

 pits in the epipharynx of many mandibulate insects, and, in the 

 ligula and the maxillae of bees and wasps are conceded, by the 

 authorities, to be gustatory, 



SMELL. That insects possess the power of smell is a matter 

 of common observation, and has been experimentally proved. 

 The many experiments of Lubbock upon ants left no doubt in 

 his mind that the sense of smell is highly developed in them. 

 Indeed it is the acuteness of the sense of smell which attracts 

 many insects so unerringly to given objects, and which has led 

 many persons to believe them sharp-sighted. Moreover, the in 

 numerable glands and special organs for secreting odors, furnish 

 the strongest indirect proof of the same fact. Some of these, of 

 which the osmaterium in Papilionid larvae and the eversible 

 glands in Parorgyia are conspicuous examples, are intended for 

 protection against inimical insects or other animals ; while others, 

 possessed by one only of the sexes, are obivously intended to 

 please or attract. A notable development of this kind is seen 

 in the large gland on the hind legs of the males of some species 

 of Hepialus, the gland being a modification of the tibia, and 

 sometimes involving the abortion of the tarsus, as in the Euro- 



