108 HYMENOPTERA. 



tween eight and twelve lines (or twelfths of an inch) in length, 

 and two and a half and three lines in breadth." This size is 

 probably a smaller average than in any other suborder ; thus the 

 Ilymenoptera while being the most cephalized, consequently 

 comprise the most compactly moulded insectean forms. 



Besides these structural characters, as animals, endowed 

 with instincts and a kind of reason differing, perhaps, only in 

 degree from that of man, these insects outrank all other Articu- 

 lates, In the unusual differentiation of the individual into males 

 and females, and, generally sterile workers, with a farther dimor- 

 pliism of tliese three sexual forms, such as Huber has noticed 

 in the Humble-bee, and a consequent subdivision of labor 

 among them ; in dwelling in large colonies, thus involving new 

 and intricate relations with other insects (such as Apliides, 

 ant-hill-inhabiting beetles, and the peculiar bee-parasites) ; 

 their wonderful instincts, their living principally on the sweets 

 and pollen of flowers, and not being essentially carnivorous 

 {i.e. seizing their prey like the Tiger-beetle) in their habits, as 

 are a large proportion ©f the other suborders, with the exception 

 of Lepidoptera ; and in their relation to man as a domestic an- 

 imal, subservient to his wants, — the Bees, and Hymenoptera 

 in general, possess a combination of characters which are not 

 found existing in any other suborder of insects, and which 

 rank them first and highest in the insect series. 



The body-wall of the Hymenoptera is unusually dense and 

 hard, smooth and highly polished, and either naked, or covered 

 with hair as in a large proportion of the bees. The head is 

 large, not much smaller than the thorax, and its front is verti- 

 cal. The antennte are short, filiform, often geniculate, very 

 rarely pectinated. The mandibles are large, stout, toothed, and 

 the maxilhe are well developed into their tln-ee subdivisions, 

 the palpi being usually six-jointed ; the labial palpi are usually 

 four-jointed, and the prolongation of the under lip, or ligula, 

 is highly developed, being furnished with a secondary pair 

 of palpi, the paraglossse, while in the pollen-gathering species 

 the ligula is of great lengtli, and thus answers much the same 

 purpose as the spiral tongue (maxillai) of the Lepidoptera. 



Reaumur states that the Bee does not suck up the liquid 

 sweets, but laps them up with its long slender hairy tongue. 



