138 EVENINGS AT THE MICROSCOPE. 



But, you ask, liow can the Bee manage to transfer 

 tlie pollen from the combs to the basket ? Can she bend 

 up the tarsus to the tibia ? or, if she can, surely she 

 could only reach the inner, not the outer surface of the 

 latter. How is this managed ? 



A very shrewd question. Truth to say, the basket 

 you have been looking at never received a single grain 

 from the combs of the joint below it. But the Bee has 

 a pair of baskets and a pair of comb-joints. It is the 

 rigid set of combs that fills the left basket, and vice 

 versa. She can easily cross her hind-legs, and thus 

 bring the tarsus of one into contact with the tibia of the 

 other ; and if you will pay a moment's more attention 

 to the matter, you will discover some further points 

 of interest in this beautiful series of contrivances still. 

 If you look at this living bee, you notice that, from the 

 position of the joints, when the insect would bring one 

 liind-foot across to the other, the under surface of the 

 tarsus would naturally scrape the edge of the opposite 

 tibia in a direction from the bases of the combs to- 

 wards their tips ; and, furtlier, that the edge of the tibia 

 so scraped would be the hinder edge, as the leg is or- 

 dinarily carried in the act of walking. 



!N^ow, if you take another glance at the basket-joint 

 in the forceps of the microscope, you will see — what, 

 perhaps, you have already noticed — that the marginal 

 spines have not exactly the same curvature on the two 

 opposite edges, but that those of the one edge are nearly 

 straight, or at most but slightly bowed, whereas those 

 of the opposite edge are strongly curved, the arc in 

 many of them reaching even to a semicircle, so that their 

 points, after performing the outward arch, retm-n to a 

 position perpendicularly over the medial line of the 

 basket. 



