42 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. , 



length, and with the labium beneath form a tube through which the 

 aliment is conveyed to the mouth, as in the hive and humble bees;" 

 also that " when the maxillae are extended to form a sucking tube with 

 the labium, they are a little separated at their base, and inclose between 

 them the cavity of the mouth, within which is a soft fleshy body, the 

 lingua or true tongue, situated anterior to and serving as a valve to 

 the phar^^nx." Again, he states that the lal)ium " is the part employed 

 in gathering honey. In Apis, Bombtis, and Anthophora, it is a long, 

 tapering and muscular organ, formed of an immense number of short 

 annular divisions, and densely covered throughout its whole length 

 with long erectile hairs. It is not tubular, but is solid ;" also, that 

 ''the manner in which the honey is obtained, when the organ (labium) 

 is plunged into it at the bottom of the flower, is by lapping or a con- 

 stant succession of short and quick extensions and contractions of the 

 organ, which occasions the fluid to be accumulated upon it, and ascend 

 along its upper surface" (wh}' not its under surface too?) "until it 

 reaches the orifice of the tube formed by the approximation of the 

 maxillae above, and the labial palpi and this part of the ligula below. 

 At each contraction apart of the extended ligula is drawn within the 

 orifice of the tube, and the honey with which it is covered ascends into 

 the cavity of the mouth, assisted in its removal from the surface of the 

 ligula by the little bunch of hairs with which the elongated second 

 joint of each labial papus is furnished. From the mouth the honey is 

 passed on through the pharynx into the oesophagus, by a simple act of 

 deglutition as in other animals." 



Burmiester, on the other hand, states that the tongue is a pierced 

 sucking instrument, and that the office of the so called sucking or honey 

 stomach is simply to become inflated as a receptacle for the air which 

 is drawn back out of the tube in the act of sucking. On the other hand 

 again, Kirby and Spence, Dr. Carpenter, Shuckard and many others, state 

 just as positively that the tongue is not pierced at all, and that the in- 

 sect does not feed by suctiou. Reaumer, while admitting that it seems 

 to be pierced, gives his reasons (derived from observing bees eat syrup 

 on a glass, and other observations, not from dissections) for conelud- 

 ino' that it is not pierced, and states that if it is pierced the aperture 

 must be too small for use as a sucking tube. Previous to these ob- 

 servations, Reaumer, following Swammerdam, had believed that bees 

 fed by suction through the tongue. After that he and Shuckard also 

 believed that the nectar arose along the outer surface of the tube through 

 the hairs with which it is clothed, after having just been lapped up by 

 its terminal portion, until it reached "a sort of tube," formed by clos- 

 ing the labial palpi jjaraglossic and maxilliv around the tongue. Kjrby 

 and Spence proposed to call the Ilymenoptera, Lappers, from their mode 

 of feeding, as distinguished from suctorial and mandibulate insects; 



