44 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



assert also that the tongue is a tii))iilar sucking iustruineut, but they 

 do not explain how matters imbibed through it get into the (jesopha- 

 gus: and so, on the other hand, Reaumer and others, who deny that 

 the tongue is a sucking tube, assert that the "membraneous sack which 

 surrounds the tongue, is at times inflated with honey or nectar," which 

 they say enters the oesophagus at the pharynx ; but fail to explain 

 how it advances from that point forward into the membraneous sack 

 in the tongue. Let us look at the difficulties which face us, if the 

 tongue is not a sucking tube; that just alluded to — the presence of 

 nectar in the membraneous sack of the tongue, far in advance of the 

 pharynx, at which the food enters — is one of them. Another is, bow 

 does the nectar rise along the outside of the tongue to the phar^-ux? 

 Says Reaumer, giving figures of the position of the tongue, "■ it is lapped 

 up." Certainly, not as a dog laps, laps the bee; a dog can make a 

 spoon of its tongue, which extends only far enough bej'ond the lips to 

 dip up water, which it throws back into the mouth. A bee can not 

 make a spoon of its tongue, which tapers to a point, and is sometimes, 

 when fully extended, more than four times as long as the head ; and 

 besides, the little opening under the labrum, could never, from its 

 position, catch a drop, if by chance one could be thrown that wa}'. 

 Certainly, the bee does not lap in this sense, and the term " lai:)pers" is 

 inapplicable. Besides, the quantity of nectar which it would ordina- 

 rily lind in the nectary of a flower, would be too small for this sort of 

 lapping, and in a little flowret of a thistle, or iron-weed (veronia), 

 there is no room/or any m,ovement of the tongue, other than a vertical 

 one, when the tongue is inserted and withdraicn. I have man}' times 

 watched bees of various species on these and other composita^: the 

 tongue is frequently withdrawn from one flowret and inserted in an- 

 other adjoining it, but is motionless whilst in the flowret. But the 

 lapping theory is aided, or is sought to be, by what may be called the 

 capillary theory; that is, it is supposed that the nectar, after being 

 lapped up by the hairy apical part of the tongue, ascends through 

 the hairs of the outer surface till it reaches the maxilla% labial palpi, 

 etc., as before observed, and then ascends through what Reaumer calls 

 a " sort of tube, made by the juxtai)nsition of these organs." Reaumer 

 ligures a tongue with the tip bent under so that the upper part of the 

 hairy surface is applied to a drop of honey on a piece of glass; 

 and again, with its position reversed so that the honey would run 

 down from the tip, but up the apical part of the tongue; but even as 

 ligured, the hone}' would still have to ascend perpendicularly a little 

 way before it would reach the "sort of tube" formed by the maxilla* 

 tongue, etc., as aforesaid, and evidently after it reaches that '' sort of 

 tube," it could only ascend through it by capillary attraction; be- 

 cause the upper end of the tube is also oj^eu. there is no way of ex. 



