494 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



The hairs on the joints of the anteunse, there is little room 

 for doubt, are simply organs of feeling or touch, and as they 

 receive their branches from the simple main nerve of the 

 antenna, terminating at the bases of similar, but very minute 

 hairs, which, from structure and position, have every appear- 

 ance of being discriminative organs of feeling also, it appears 

 reasonable to conclude that the single main nerve of the 

 antenna is devoted to the sense of touch only, as the optic 

 nerve is devoted solely to the sense of vision. If we have 

 separate nerves for vision and touch, it is reasonable to 

 expect that a separate nerve would have been devoted to so 

 important a sense as hearing, and that if the antennae had 

 possessed that faculty we should have found a separate nerve 

 in each devoted to it ; but as such is not the case we may 

 reasonably conclude that all the hairs are appropriated to the 

 sense of touch under ordinary circumstances, and that the 

 delicate and beautiful organization of the terminations of the 

 antennae are especially devoted to the office of discriminative 

 feeling ; and this conclusion appears the more probable when 

 we consider that for the ordinary purposes of touch each hair 

 of the body and limbs has a single branch of nerve, while the 

 broad base of the terminal cone of the antennal nerve is 

 applied to the bases of a congregation of very minute hairs, 

 based on a thin and probably elastic membrane. 



The mode of the imbibition of nutriment by these insects 

 does not appear to have been determined by the naturalists 

 who have described them in a satisfactory manner. Swara- 

 mardam, in p. 33 in his book of ' Nature or History of 

 Insects,' states : — " The louse has neither beak, teeth, nor 

 any kind of mouth, as Dr. Hooke describes it, for the entrance 

 into the gullet is absolutely closed. In place of all these it 

 has a proboscis or trunk, or, as it may be otherwise called, a 

 pointed or hollow aculeus or sucker, with which it pierces the 

 skin and sucks the human blood, taking it for its food into 

 the body: but this proboscis cannot be shown, on account of 

 extreme smallness, nor can it be distinguished unless a person 

 happens to see it by chance." 



This description of the oral apparatus of the insect is to a 

 very considerable extent incorrect, arising probably from the 

 difficulties under which the great microscopical observers 

 laboured in those days. In the specimen under description 



