290 American Quarterly Microscopical Journal. 



gives his reasons (derived from observing bees eat syrup on a 

 glass, and other observations, not from dissections) for concluding 

 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 

 observations, Reaumur, 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 sur- 

 face 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 closing the labial palpi paraglossae and 

 maxillae around the tongue. Kirby and Spence proposed to call 

 the Hymenoptera, Lappers, from their mode of feeding, as dis- 

 tinguished from suctorial and mandibulate insects." 



The views of these authors * seem to have been generally 

 accepted by all subsequent writers without further investigation. 

 The Encyclopcedia Britajinica, new edition, which may be sup- 

 posed to embody the latest and most authentic information on the 

 subject, states : " For the purpose of taking up fluids, bees are 

 provided, in common with all hymenopterous insects, with a long 

 and flexible proboscis or trunk, which may be considered as a 

 lengthened tongue, though, strictly speaking, it is formed by a 

 prolongation of the under lip. // is not tubular, as Swammerdam 

 had supposed, but solid throughout; and the minute depression 

 at its extremity is not the aperture of any canal through which 

 liquids can be absorbed. The trunk of the bee performs strictly 

 the ofiice of a tongue, and not that of a tube for suction; for when 

 it takes up honey or any other fluid aliment, the under or the 

 upper surfaces are more immediately applied to it, and rolled 

 from side to side, and the bee thus licks up what adheres to it." 

 Reaumur, Savigny, Newport, Kirby and Spence, Carpenter, Huxley, 

 and Hunter in the EncyclopcBdia Britannica, seem to have 

 adopted, substantially, this view of the structure and use of the 

 tongue ; and certainly Mr. Chambers is entitled to no little credit 

 for his hardihood in venturing to question the conclusions of so 

 many eminent authorities. 



The mouth-organs of the bee are extremely complex, consisting 

 of a number of pieces adapted to collecting either solid or liquid 

 food, and also to building and filling the waxen cells ; the only 

 one of these organs respecting the structure and use of which 

 there is any disagreement, is the piece variously termed lingua, 



* Kirby & Spence, An Introduction to Entomology, 1828. 



