28 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HOXEY-BEE. 



the tirst stomach, aud is suiTouiided by muscles which enable 

 the bee to compress it, and empty its contents through her 

 proboscis into the cells. She can also, at will, keep a supply, 

 to be digested, at leisure, when leaving with a swarm (418). 

 or while in the cluster during the cold of winter (620), and 

 use it only as fast as necessai-y. For this purpose, the honey- 

 sack is supplied at its lower extremity, inside, with a round 

 ball, which Burmeister has called the stomach-mouth, and 

 which has been beautifully described by Schiemenz (1883). 

 It opens by a complex valve and connects the honey-sack with 

 the digesting-stomach, through a tube or canal, projecting in- 

 side the latter. Tliis canal is lined with hairs pointing down- 

 ward, which prevent the solid food, such as pollen grains, 

 from returning to the honey-sack. Cheshire affirms that this 

 stomach-mouth, which protinides into the honey-sack, acts as 

 a sort of sieve, and strains the honey from the gi'ains of pollen 

 floating in it, appropriatmg them for digestion, and allowing 

 the honey to flow back into the sack. The bee could thus, at 

 will, "eat or drink from the mixed diet she carries." 



64. According to Schonfeld, {Illustrierte Bienenzeitung) 

 the chyle, or milky food which is used to feed the yomig 

 larvae,— and which we have shown to be, most probably, the 

 product of the upper pair of glands (39-40),— would be 

 produced from the digesting-stomach, which he and others call 

 chyle-stomach. Although we are not competent in the matter, 

 we would remark that the so-called chyle-stomach produces 

 chyme, or digested food, from which the chyle, or nourishing 

 constituent, is absorbed by the cell-lming of the stomach and 

 of the intestines, and finally converted into blood. We do not 

 see how^ this chyle could be thickened and regurgitated by the 

 stomach to be returned to the mouth. 



65. In mammals, the chyliferous vessels do not exist in 

 the stomach, but in the intestine, the function of the stomach 

 being only to digest the food by changing it into chyme, from 

 which the chyle is aftel'^vards separated, for the use of the 

 body. 



66. Again, in the mammals, the glands which produce 



