Kov. 2, lb83.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



267 



1 



AN 1LLU_.EJRATED ^^ j^ 



MAGAZINE OF^€IENCE^ 



^PLAINiryfORDED -£XACTLYDESCR]BED_ 



LONDON: FRIDAY, NOV. 2, 1883, 



Contents op No. 105. 



PAGB 



Pleasant Hours with theMicroscope. 



By U.J. Slack 26" 



Strange Sea Creatures. By R. A. 



Proctor 268 



The Birth and Growth of Myth. 



XIX. By Edward Clodd 269 



The Himalayas and the Alps. II. 



By Colonel Godwin Austen 270 



The Amateur Electrician. (/Him.) 271 

 Curiosities of the Sub-Tropical 



Garden 273 



The Green Sun in India. By E. A. 



Proctor 274 



PAOB 



Tricycles in 1883. Bv J. Browning 271 

 Pretty Proofs of the Earth's Rotun- 

 dity. By R. A. Proctor 275 



Munificent Employers 276 



Correspondence : Sir William 

 Herschel— Tricycles (An Error 

 Corrected) — Large v. Small 

 Wlieels for Tricycles — Anthro- 

 pometry—The Bam Owl — Large 

 Sun-Spots— Letters Received and 



Answered 277 



Our Mathematical Column 279 



Oar Chess Column 281 



PLEASANT HOURS WITH THE 

 MICROSCOPE. 



By Henry J. Slack, F.G.S., F.R.M.S. 



THE longest, and in some respects most beautiful tongue, 

 found in any bee belongs to the genus Antliopkora 

 (Mason Bees). A. relusa makes its nest in sandy banks 

 and crevices of walls, and its mouth-organs are beautifully 

 displayed when mounted in a fluid medium. I obtained a 

 fine specimen from Mr. Baker, prepared by F. Eiiock. It 

 is obvious that the relation of bees to certain flowers must 

 be aflfected by the length of their tongues, and in this respect 

 the Mason has a great advantage. The Common Hive Bee 

 cannot get at the nectar of flowers which the Mason and 

 the Ligurian Honey Bee are able to reach. The American 

 authorities praise the Italian bees highly. Thus, Pro- 

 fessor Cook, in his " Manual of the Apiary," says : — 

 " They possess longer tongues, and so can gather from 

 flowers which are useless to the black bee. I have 

 seen Italians working on red clover. I never saw a 

 black bee thus employed." Darwin noticed that the Hive 

 Bee was as fond of the honey of the red clover as the 

 Humble Bee, and often saw it sucking it through the holes 

 in the corolla bitten by the latter insect. He also stated 

 he had been assured that when red clover had been mown, 

 the flowers of the second crop were somewhat smaller, and 

 these were abundantly visited by Hive Bees. " The 

 fertility of the clover depends," as Darwin says, " on bees 

 moving the petals, and if Humble Pices were to become 

 rare it might be a great advantage to the clover to have a 

 shorter or more deeply-divided corolla, so that Hive Bees 

 should be induced to suck its flowers." As the Ligurian 

 Bee is bred by some apiarists in this country, the Humble 

 Bee may become a less important agent in fertilising 

 this plant. The Italian Bee crosses with the Common 

 Hive Bee, and perhaps some readers of Kno\vled«;e 

 may have an opportunity of noticing whether the crossed 

 variety possess the lengtli of tongue belonging to the Italian 

 race. This would be an interesting investigation, especially 

 as Queen Bees have shorter tongues than workers, and so 

 have drones. The mental characters of the common and of 

 the Italian bee are reported to vary considerably. The 



latter are said to be more amicable to man, but fiercer to 

 insect robbers who try to despoil them, and also to work 

 earlier and later. Mr. Root, in his " A. B.C. of Bee- 

 Culture," considers the hybrids equal in honey-gathering to 

 the full-blood Italians, but he says " they inherit the bold- 

 ness of the Italians and the vindictiveness of the blacks. 

 Without any buzz or note of alarm, one of these sons of 

 war will quietly dart forth and inflict his sting before you 

 hardly know where it comes from ; then another and 

 another," &c. He also accuses them of being more dis- 

 posed to rob than Italians, but not so much so as common 

 bees. 



A creature that leads so complex a life as a bee, has its 

 habits determined by modifications of both external and 

 internal organs. The Hive Bee requires wax, as well as 

 honey, and this is produced by a special secretion. Mr. 

 E,oot, in the work already cited, suggests a pretty experi- 

 ment, that of feeding bees heavily on sugar syrup in warm 

 weather, and at the end of the second or third day looking 

 for the little pearly discs of wax that are newly-formed and 

 protrude between the rings on the under side of the bee's 

 body (A). He says they are objects of rare beauty under 

 the microscope. The anterior legs of the bee are adapted 



A. — Sketch of Bee's Abdomen, with wax plates protruding. 

 B. — Sketch of Bee's Fore-leg, with notch. 



to seize these little wax cakes and convey them to its 

 mouth, where it is kneaded with saliva. 



To collect the pollen which is used in rearing the brood, 

 the bee sweeps it from the plants with its tongue : its 

 forelegs scrape it from the tongue. There is a little 

 hollow in the leg, shown in the figure (B), and a finger-like 

 projection opposite to it. Its tongue is said to be caught 

 in the hollow, and when the leg is bent the projecting 

 piece closes upon it. The pollen, moistened with honey 

 and saliva, is conveyed by the middle legs to the hind pair, 

 and stored in depressions somewhat miscalled " pollen 

 baskets." They are little hollows easily seen with a hand- 

 magnifier. Professor Cook speaks doubtfully about the 

 function of the little notch in the foreleg of the working 

 bee. He says, " For several years this has caused specu- 

 lation among my students, and has attracted the attention 

 of observing apiarists. Some have supposed that it aided 

 bees in reaching deeper down tubular flowers, others that 

 it was used in scraping oil" the pollen, and still others that 

 it enabled the bees to liold on when clustering. The first 

 two functions may belong to it, though other honey- and 

 pollen-gathering bees do not possess it." 



In the next paper the sting of the bee will be consi- 

 dered, as one of the modifications of an organ which has 

 other shapes and uses in many insects belonging to the 

 Hymenoptera. 



To revert just now to another subject, the writer has 

 been led to construct a tubular live-box, to facilitate 

 showing the action of the blue-bottle's remarkable mouth- 

 organs, and that of similar insects. It does not answer 

 for bees. At this time of the year many large flies are 

 driven indoors by the cold, and this little apparatus 

 may assist in studying some of their interesting pecu- 



