THE MOUTH. 369 



fly sipping up a drop of spilt wine, or revelling 

 upon a morsel of sugar, it will be found that its 

 mouth is totally unlike either of the former : it 

 is short, thick, and fleshy, and acts as a sucker, 

 the nutriment ascending through the canal which 

 runs upward into the throat. The aphides and 

 all their brethren have a mouth differently con- 

 structed, being a long and slender pointed canal, 

 of a fleshy, or leathery substance, but furnished 

 internally with several slender bristles, which the 

 insect employs as lancets to wound its prey. In 

 the flea, again, the structure is quite different." 



To the variations in 

 the mouth of each of 

 these insects it has been 

 thought good to attach a 

 distinct name. When, for 

 example, we speak of a 

 bee's proboscis,* we speak actually of its mouth. 

 The mouth of the butterfly is called 

 by most entomologists antlia ; that 

 of the aphis a promuscis ; that of 

 the flea a rostrulufo But the reader 



* The proboscis of the carpenter-bee differs from 

 that of the honey-bee, possessing a curious notched 

 sheath, as represented in the lower cut. 

 B B 



