INSECT-ADAPTATIONS. 371 



What can be more delightful, than to enter a forest 

 abounding in examples, for the purpose of satisfying 

 your mind whether there is any truth in the statement 

 that the tongues and jaws of Lepidopterous insects, or 

 Butterflies, are adapted in length to the corollas of 

 the flowers they suck; so that a tubular blossom is 

 rifled by an elongated proboscis, and a salver-shaped 

 corolla by a short obtuse muzzle. In the Silk- worm 

 Moths, which do not require food in the Imago state, 

 the mouth is not developed ; but in the Humming-bird 

 Hawk-moth, which hovers about tubular flowers, and 

 greedily extracts the nectar, the tongue is of enormous 

 length. 



The beautiful adaptation of insects, at large, to the 

 flowers on which they feed, is well shown by St. Pierre, 

 in the Bee. He observes : " Nous voyons avec plaisir 

 les relations de la trompe d 'une abeille avec les nectaires 

 des fleurs ; celles de ses cuisses creusees en cuillers et 

 herissees de poils, avec les poussieres des etamines qu 'elle 

 y entasse ; celle de ses quatre ailes, avec le butin dont 

 elle est chargee ; enfin 1 'usage du long aiguillon qu 'elle 

 .en a reyu pour la defense de son bien."* 



During a stroll one day into the forest of Celebes, 



I was very much struck with the ingenuity of a large 



species of Bee, which frequented, in great numbers, a tree 



loaded with monopetalous corollas, furnished with a very 



long tube. The slender trunk of the Bee was, doubtless, 



too short to reach the honied store concealed in the 



nectary at the bottom, and therefore its "long, narrow 



pump," as Paley terms the promuscis of Hymenopterous 



* Etudes de la Nature. 



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