78 THE MICROSCOPE. 



it remains in contact with the foot. It is sufficiently 

 glutinous, even in the fluid, or rather semi-fluid, state 

 it assumes as it exudes, to sustain the weight of the 

 insect, when the strain is put equally upon all the 

 hairs, of which there are about 1,200 on each pad; 

 but when the pad is removed obliquely, so that each 

 row is detached separately, the resistance amounts 

 practically to nothing. A neat experiment will 

 demonstrate this, even to the most sceptical. If a 

 piece of adhesive label be cut for convenience into a 

 pear-shaped disc, an inch in diameter, and caused to 

 adhere to the hand by slightly damping it, a force of 

 many pounds applied to the narrow extremity in the 

 axis of the paper- will not stir it, whilst it is imme- 

 diately removed with very little resistance, when the 

 force is applied so as to lift it gradually up., 



" The direction and length of the hairs upon the pad 

 are so adapted to the oblique direction in which the 

 strain is put upon them when the tarsus is straight, 

 that the insect has a perfectly secure hold; this is 

 immediately released as soon as the tarsus is curved, 

 which is effected by the long slender tendon already 

 mentioned. In the small house-fly, the pads them- 

 selves are capable of being curved, for the tarsal tendon 

 branches, and is inserted into the distal extremity of 

 the pad."* 



I will select one more insect's foot for examination, 

 and that shall be the hind-foot of the bee. I have 

 just caught a hive-bee as it was gathering pollen from 

 mignonette, a flower to which bees resort much for 

 the sake of the pollen-grains. I see on each of the 

 hind-legs a reddish-yellow globular mass of substance 

 adhering to its middle portion. After killing the bee 

 by putting it under an inverted tumbler with some 



* "Anatomy of the Blow-fly ; " pp. 20 22. 



