MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 257 



except tluit the down on the thorax was a little more yellow, I have found to 

 possess tongues a little shorter tliau those of our American Italians, though the 

 average is but very little less. I have examined bees' tongues from workers 

 reared from two different imported Italian queens, and found that in both 

 cases they exceeded in length those of our American-bred bees, tiiough the dif- 

 ference is very slight. 



In 1878 I measured the tongues of some bees sent me for Cyprians. The 

 bees were very yellow and beautiful. I found them to possess the longest 

 tongues I have ever met, but there was very great variation. I had but few 

 bees and sent for more, which never came. I had arranged the present season 

 for bees of the various European races, and had been promised specimens, but 

 greatly to my regret and disappointment, the bees have failed to come, so I 

 have to make this but a partial report. 



That the added length is of practical importance I have proved as follows: 

 Honey in a vessel covered with fine gauze was placed before Italians till they 

 ceased to eat because the honey was beyond reacli. The vessel was then 

 placed before black bees, which failed to reach the fluid. The vessel was 

 then filled and given first to the black bees, which w^orked till the liquid was 

 inaccessible, when it was placed before Italians. These would invariably com- 

 mence to sip the honey. Again, a box one-half inch deep, without top or 

 bottom, was covered with fine gauze having fifteen meshes to the inch. A 

 glass was then placed in the box so inclined that while one end rested against 

 the gauze the other was one-half inch from it. The glass was thinly spread 

 with honey on the side next the gauze. This was placed in a hive of Italians, 

 when tlie glass was cleaned of honey for a distance of twenty-four meshes from 

 the edge where the glass rested on the gauze. The black bees could only reach 

 and only cleaned for nineteen meshes. Many trials gave the same result. 

 This then shows why Italians can gather, and often do collect from flowers 

 which fail utterly to attract the black bees. The nectar is beyond their reach. 



It would seem from the above that American-bred bees have shorter tongues 

 than those direct from Italy. It seems very probable that '' natural selection," 

 the very law which raised Italians to their position of superiority, also gave to 

 them their longer tongues. Shut up in their mountain home, a mere isolated 

 basin, where competition must have been very excessive, nature took advantage 

 of every favorable variation and developed those striking excellences peculiar 

 to the Italian. During these ages there was no kindly bee-master possessed of 

 the intelligence sufficient to nurse the weaklings, nor any "Dollar Queen busi- 

 ness" to stimulate indiscriminate breeding, and the weak died victims to 

 starvation. And so we are indebted to the stern, inexorable law of nature for 

 the incomparable breeding which wrought out such admirable results in far- 

 famed Liguria. Unquestionably the crowded apiaries of Austria and Germany 

 have heightened the "struggle for life," and had a similar tendency to develop 

 superior excellence in the European black bees. It is more than probable that 

 the German bees of crowded Europe have longer tongues and are generally 

 superior to the same in America, where they have long been favored with 

 broad floral areas and comparative absence of competition. I should expect 

 that this very law might have developed varieties of the black race which are 

 superior to others of the same race. It is more than possible that "survival 

 of the fittest" explains tlie origin of the superior varieties which are said to 

 exist in various provinces of Europe. For the same reason we should surely 

 expect superior excellence in the Cyprian bees. Crowded as tliey liave been for 



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