270 PEOCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



or tasting organs. If the tongue of the living fly were examined it 

 would be found constantly moist, and it was believed that the moisten- 

 ing secretion passed out either through this wavy line or through the 

 tissue itself. Dr. Anthony had spoken of the muscles as being the 

 means of closing the false tracheal tubes : now this appeared to him to 

 be a mistake ; he could only suppose that the muscles were used to 

 open the tubes, and that in their nonnal condition they remained 

 closed. He must totally dissent from Dr. Anthony's notion as to the 

 pimiping action of the interior of these tubes ; he had examined 

 himdreds of them, and had never seen anything like it. He had given 

 some blood to a fly and then watched the creature feed upon it, and 

 had seen the blood corpuscles flowing up these tubes with great 

 regularity without any pumping or pulsating action whatever. He 

 also dissented from this idea because in the upper part of the proboscis 

 there was a real pumping apparatus. In action all the little canals 

 served as feeders to the great central canal, and when this was full of 

 fluid the valve action drew it up and forced it into the alimentary 

 canal; he had carefully examined the part which he had just de- 

 scribed and figured on the board, and had no doubt whatever that it 

 was a real pumping organ. The drawings which Dr. Anthony had 

 sent with his paper \^ere very, very nice, and were, he believed, quite 

 correct, only he had not seen those ear-like processes which were 

 shown on one of them ; if they had been in existence in any of the 

 very numerous specimens he had examined he felt sure he must have 

 seen them, and as he had not observed them in any case he was dis- 

 posed to think they must be due to something in the mode of dissection 

 or preparation. Though he did not think that the tubes were suckers 

 at all, he thought they might be really filters or strainers to prevent 

 particles which were too large from running up the central tube and 

 choking the j^ump. 



The President said that having listened to the paper, and having 

 seen the very beautiful drawings by which it was accompanied, he was 

 inclined to put much more faith in them than Mr. Lowne did. So far 

 as his own observations went, there was one character common to all 

 suctorial organs, whether they were of this kind or such as the foot of 

 the fly — they all consisted of a margin of soft tissue and an internal 

 part capable of being raised by some muscular action. He had long 

 been perfectly familiar with the chitinous rings of the fly's tongue, 

 and had often asked himself the question how they acted, and he had 

 never been able to see in what way they were able to take up fluids 

 in the way they did. As regarded the whole tongue, he was not aware 

 that it had such a margin as would enable it to act, as a whole, as a 

 sucking organ ; but if each of those spoon-shaped bodies shown by 

 Dr. Anthony were placed as di'awn, then their action became perfectly 

 intelligible, and it was perfectly clear that they would act in the 

 manner stated. It was quite clear that if there were muscles on the 

 opposite sides of these chitinous rings, and if the normal position of 

 the rings was to be closed, that they would, in the act of opening, at 

 once give rise to a suctorial action ; and if the relaxation of the 

 muscles closed the tube, it was quite likely that by the collapse of 

 the channel of communication between these spoon-shaped suckers the 



