326 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



walking, running, leaping, burrowing, and swimming ; 

 wings for flight, and wing-cases to protect them. The 

 most perfectly-furnished insect mouth is made up of 

 twelve principal moveable pieces upper lip (Labrum), 

 under lip (Labiutn\ a pair of upper jaws (Mandibul(Z\ 

 a pair of under jaws (Maxilla) working horizontally 

 between the lips, and six feelers (Palpi), four of which 

 (Maxillary Palpi) are attached to the under jaws, and 

 the remaining two (Labial Palpi) to the under lip. 

 All these may be easily seen in large beetles ; but in 

 many other insects some of the pieces are wanting 

 altogether, and the others are found under very 

 different forms, according to the character of the food 

 they are designed to act upon. The most conspicuous 

 organs, however, in the majority of our local insects 

 are those wonderful articulated appendages projecting 

 from the space between the eyes and the mouth, called 

 the antennae. That these are exquisitely sensitive 

 organs there is ample evidence to show ; but whether 

 they are the seat of a simple or a compound sense 

 appears to be as yet an unsolved question. Some 

 insects use them as tactors to explore the surface on 

 which they are walking ; others as instruments of dis- 

 covery when the object they seek is so well enclosed 

 in a carefully-constructed cell deeply concealed in 

 wood, that the antennae cannot possibly touch it. A 

 wasp confined in a wine glass inverted over a drop of 

 turpentine or collodion on absorbent paper, after a few 

 frantic struggles to escape, quietly settles down to 

 devote especial attention to its antennae by carefully 

 and repeatedly passing its fore feet along their whole 

 length, as if to free them from the annoying effect of 

 the vapour query, odour?* In many insects the 



* In the " Chichester Magazine" for June, 1837 (a periodical 

 long since defunct), there is a short article bearing upon this 

 subject, which we quote : 



" I once imprisoned a few small predacious beetles in a close 

 box having a glazed lid, with some camphor ; and I kept my eye 



