PART .] THE INSECTS WHICH VISIT FLOWERS. 45 
mandibles, and convey it to the mouth; they obtain honey by 
applying the mandibles and maxille together so as to form a short, 
conical sucking-apparatus. Besides a floral diet, they avail them- 
selves, according to Westwood, of other plant-juices;! they injure, 
Fig. 9.—Thrips (Black-fly). 
1.— Thrips, seen from above (x 30). 
2.—Its head, more highly on front view. 
é —Mandible. —Maxilla 5.—Labium. 
6.—Leg. c, coxa; f, femur; té tibia ; t, g on the end of which is a sucking dise instead 
of hooks. 
for example, cucumbers and melons, and leave the leaves on which 
they have settled dotted over with small dead spots. Thus they 
agree with Diptera in availing themselves both of pollen and honey, 
and in not restricting themselves to a floral diet. 
We may here mention the young larve of Meloé, called by Kirby ? Pedi- 
culus Melitte, and by Dufour Triungulinus, which resemble the Thysanoptera 
in the activity of their movements, and in their minute size which permits entry 
into all flowers. Although they visit flowers only to attach themselves as para- 
sites to bees, they feed for the time on pollen and honey, and getting thus 
dusted with pollen they play a part similar to, but even more subordinate 
than, that of the Thysanoptera, 
Hymenoptera. 
The order of Hymenoptera takes a still higher rank than the 
Diptera in regard to its adaptations for a. floral diet and its 
importance in fertilisation ; for the great majority of its members, 
in the perfect state, are entirely dependent upon flowers. Review- 
ing the main divisions of this order, the Wood-borers (Sirea, L.) are 
the only forms which I have never found upon flowers; of the ants 
several species, of the Saw-flies (Zenthredo), Ichneumons (Jehnewmon, 
' Introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects, ii. p. 4. 
2 Monographia Apum Anglice, pl. xiv. fig. 10. 
