Tongue of the Honey- Bee. 289 



tongue was a sucking tube. * * * There can, however, be 

 little doubt that he regarded the aperture under the labium as the 

 opening through which food passed to the oesophagus." 



" Newport states that ' the maxillae and labium are the only or- 

 gans of the ApidcB employed in feeding ; ' that ' in the true 

 ApidiT, which subsist entirely upon honey, they (the maxillae) are 

 drawn out to a great 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 ex- 

 tended 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 

 pharynx.' Again, he states that the labium ' is the part employed 

 in gathering honey. In Apis, Boinbus, and AntJiophora, 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 constant succession of short and quick exten- 

 sions and contractions of the organ, which occasions the fluid to 

 be accumulated upon it, and ascend along its upper surface ' (why 

 not its under surface too ?) ' until it reaches the orifice of the tube 

 formed by the approximation of the maxillce above, and the labial 

 palpi and this part of the ligula below. At each contraction a 

 part 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 palpus 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.' " 



" Burmeister, on the other hand, states that the tongue is a 

 pierced sucking instrument, and that the ofiice of the so-called 

 sucking or honey stomach is simply to become inflated as a re- 

 ceptacle 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 insect does not feed 

 by suction. Reaumur, while admitting that it seems to be pierced, 



