insects: their feet. 121 



greatly increase the capacity of the vessel to receive the 

 load, on the principle of the sloping stakes which the- 

 farmer plants along the sides of his waggon when he is 

 going to carry a load of hay or corn. 



But, you ask, how can the Bee manage to transfer the 

 pollen from the combs to the basket 1 Can she bend up 

 the tarsus to the tibia 1 or, if she could, surely she could 

 reach only the inner, not the outer surface of the latter. 

 How is this managed 1 



A very shrewd question. Truth to say, the basket 

 you have been looking at never received a single grain 

 from the combs of the joint below it. But the Bee has 

 a pair of baskets and a pair of comb-joints. It is the 

 right set of combs that fills the left basket, and vice versa. 

 She can easily cross her hind-legs, and thus bring the 

 tarsus of one into contact with the tibia of the other ; 

 and if you will pay a moment's more attention to the 

 matter, you will discover, in this beautiful series of con- 

 trivances, some further points of interest still. If you 

 look at this living Bee, you notice that, from the position 

 of the joints, when the insect would bring one hind-foot 

 across to the other, the under surface of the tarsus 

 would naturally scrape the edge of the opposite tibia in 

 a direction from the basis of the combs towards their 

 tips; and, further, that the edge of the tibia so scraped 

 would be the hinder edge, as the leg is ordinarily carried 

 in the act of walking. 



Now, if you take another glance at the basket-joint in 

 the forceps of the microscope, you will see — what, perhaps, 

 you have already noticed — that the marginal spines have 

 not exactly the same curvature on the two opposite edges, 

 but that those of the one edge are nearly straight, or at 

 most but slightly bowed, whereas those of the opposite 

 edge are strongly curved, the arc in many of them 

 reaching even to a semicircle ; so that their points, 

 after performing the outward arch, return to a posi- 



