SMELL IN INSECTS. 85 



trunks of trees with honey or thick syrup, by which means 

 they attract and capture not a few varieties. 



Though thus generally admitted to be what the Italians 

 would call most excellent Nasuti, Insects still puzzle us as to 

 what exact part of their enigmatical frames may be con- 

 sidered an olfactory organ. Tl.is is a point on which natu- 

 ralists of the highest credit have been so much at issue, that, 

 when we read the opinions of each, and the experimental 

 evidence adduced by each in support of his own, we seem as if 

 we could scarcely arrive, between them, at any nearer conclusion 

 than that Insects must be all nose. 



By Kirby and Spence they are invested indeed with the nasal 

 appendage corresponding in position, if not always in shape, 

 with the conspicuous proboscis of a man, a monkey, and the 

 other Mammalia. Huber also opined that their organ of smell 

 is seated in the head and near the mouth, at all events in the 

 case of the Bee ; and in proof of his position, he tells us, that, 

 having dipped a fine pencil in oil of turpentine, he approached 

 it carefully to every part of a Bee's head, but without causing 

 the least apparent sensation until approximated to that in 

 question, when the Insect, starting suddenly from the honey 

 on which it was regaling, beat its wings with violence, and 

 would have flown off but for a removal of the offence. On 

 repetition of the experiment the same effect ensued : the angry 

 Bee fanning itself with its wings, as if to blow away the un- 

 welcome odour. 



The feet of our insect artificers, curiously jointed and often 

 palmed, seem to partake, indeed, of the power, and to perform 

 in some measure the office of our hands ; but in aid of the 

 feet, the antenna? and the palpi (four-jointed bodies near the 

 mouth), popularly termed feelers, are also for ever at work to 

 try, touch, and examine. 



We come now, in the last case, to the important faculty 

 of taste, with* which Insects of all classes, and in every 

 region of the earth, whether of propensities herbivorous 



