262 SENSES OF INSECTS. 
resides, the only modes to which we can have recourse to 
form any probable conjecture, are analogy and dissection. 
At first, the opinion noticed above, that the palpi are its 
organs, seems not altogether unreasonable ; but as the 
argument from analogy, except as to their situation near 
the mouth, is not in favour of them, and there seems no 
call, were smell their function, for the numerous variations* 
observable in their structure, I think we must consider 
them, as I have endeavoured to prove, rather as instru- 
ments of touch. Let us now inquire, whether there be 
not discoverable upon dissection, in the interior of the 
head of any insects, some organ that may be deemed, 
from its situation, under what we have called the nose 
and nostrils, the seat of the sense we are treating of. 
The common burying-beetle (Necrophorus Vespillo) is 
an insect remarkable for its acuteness of smell, which 
enables it to scent out and bury, as was formerly related 
to you a , the carcases of small animals. Take one of 
these insects, and kill it as formerly directed, — examine 
first its nose : in the middle of the anterior part you will 
see a subtrapezoidal space, as it were cut out and filled 
with a paler piece of a softer and more membranous tex- 
ture. Next divide the head horizontally; and under the 
nose, and partly under this space, which I call the rlii- 
narium or nostril-piece b , you will find a pair of circular 
pulpy cushions, covered by a membrane transversely 
striated with beautifully fine striae. These are what I 
take to be the organs of smell, and they still remain dis- 
tinctly visible in a specimen I have had by me more 
than fifteen years. A similar organ may be discovered 
Vol. I. p. 352—. " Vol. III. p. 480—. 
