BY W. R. COLLEDGE. 127 



the surgeon must be made straight for its special purpose. 

 If it were given a curvature, such as we have there, it 

 would bend or break at the first thrust. 



These considerations led me to dissect the organ 

 with a good deal of interest, and I was rewarded by an 

 interesting discovery, which, so far as I know, has not 

 been noticed before. We are familiar with the statement 

 that the female mosquito has neatly packed in her proboscis 

 an armoury of six lancets. Some of these have minute 

 teeth on their tips for deepening and enlarging the cut. 



In the Toxorynchites, however, I found all the lancets,, 

 except two, much degenerated, seemingly comparatively 

 useless for thrusting into flesh. Two, however, were well 

 developed. One, the largest, is a hollow channel, open 

 on its upper side, and bent to the curve of the proboscis, 

 and represents the organ through which the blood is 

 pumped in the biting species. The other was a long slender 

 rod, which near its end expanded into a long club-like 

 form, the swelling being covered Avith fine hairs, growing 

 larger and curving outwardly as they approached the 

 tip, so that you have a long curved channel, and lying 

 in the inside a long handled brush, not very unlike, in 

 miniature, to that long brush called a " turk's head," used 

 by housewives in clearing cobwebs from the corners of a 

 ceiling. This formation is quite unusual in the mosquito, 

 and is analagous to some of the insects, whose chief food 

 is the nectar of flowers and juices of fruit. The tongue 

 of the honey bee is a ringed flexible organ, capable of con- 

 siderable retraction and extension, and its food is lapped 

 up in this way, the other mouth organs forming a tube 

 up which the juices ascend by the action of the tongue. 

 In the Mining Bee (which bores holes in the ground for the 

 reception of its eggs), you have a tongue which is clothed 

 with hairs in the same way as this mosquito. 



The bee's tongue is not so long as this mosquitoe's 

 proboscis, and the drooping shape certainly points to the 

 idea that it is intended not for fiercing flesh, but dipping 

 into the nectaries of flowers and juices of fruits. 



Another point of confirmation is that the flabella, 

 or lips of the proboscis, are clothed on the inside also with 

 fine hairs of a similar character, Avhich by capillary attrac- 

 tion, would tend to suck up and retain floral juices, near 



