they cease their labours and stop the g-reat work of the 

 hive ; that they will not do ; so the others attend to them 

 with the greatest care and affection. They go to them, they 

 open their mouths (the temporary honey store-house), the 

 bung-ry, tired v/orkers of the hive put in their proboscides 

 exactly as they would do into a flower, and so eat. It is said^ 

 also, that certain robber bees maintain themselves in a gen- 

 tlemanly and Paul Clifford-like manner, by waylaying in- 

 dustrious common-place bees who have been meritoriously 

 employing- themselves in working for the £-ood of their 

 hive, and then compelling ihe poor innocent creatures to 

 deliver up the contents, not of their saddle but their honey- 

 bags, generously permitting their victims to set out unin- 

 jured in search of more honey to replace that which they 

 have appropriated to their own uses. The proboscis is too 

 interesting a piece of vital mechanism to be passed by with 

 only an indirect mention. So let us first show it greatly 

 magnified, as in the accompanying engraving (Fig. 9), and 

 then examine it a little in detail. 



(Fig. 9.) 



Bees form part of that section of insects called mandibu- 

 late insects, i. e., insects which eat with jaws, in contradis- 

 tinction to the haustellates, or insects wliich suck up liquid 

 food through a trunk. Beetles, hornets, and other insects^ 



