EXTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 91 



is in reality nothing more than the limb, or elongate process of 

 the under lip. The true tongue is the hypopharynx or lingtia 

 of Savigny. I cannot find it mentioned by Fabricius, except 

 as a seta in the mouth of Diptera. Cuvier first notices it as a 

 tongue in Orthoptera. Savigny clearly points it out in Diptera, 

 Hymenoptera, Orthoptera and Hemiptera. Our illustrious 

 countryman, Kirby, applies the term lingua to the right part in 

 Orthoptera, Hemiptera, and Neuroptera : but in Hy7nenoptera 

 and Coleoptera, he has given this name to the process of the 

 lower lip, already described as the ligula. In Diptera he has 

 declined naming it.^ Latreille, in his earlier works, calls this 

 part by various names ; but in his Cours d'Entomologie, he clearly 

 points out the true tongue, and laudably proposes that the last 

 name should be restricted to it. My ideas on the subject have 

 somewhat altered since I gave a cursory sketch of the mouth on 

 a former occasion. I am happy in being able thus to point out 

 my own error before the unthankful task has devolved on 

 another. Beautifully has De Geer observed, that the evil is 

 not very great, if further observation prove our old ideas to be 

 untenable ; we have then merely to remodel those ideas by the 

 result of the later observation.^ It ever has been, and may it 

 still continue to be, my endeavour to amend an error as soon as 

 I am aware of it. In Lepidoptera the tongue has never yet 

 been noticed. Latreille fancied, if I comprehend him rightly, 

 that it existed in the suture, uniting the feeler-jaws.*^ 1 have 

 observed, very near the pharynx, but a little below it in Sphinx 

 Ligustri, a small mammiform protuberance. This is so 

 exactly the site of the tongue in bees, that it seems wonderful 

 that the accurate Savigny should have overlooked it. I can 



* See Plate VII. fig. 5, in the Introduction to Entomology. 



^ Le mal n'est pas meme fort grand si par des nouvelles observations on 

 trouve s'^tre trompe dans ses id^es'; il n'y a lorsqu'a les changer selon le 

 resultat de ces observations ulterieurs. — De Geer. 



^ Amongst these parts (of the mouth in Lepidoptera), there seems at first 

 sight no representative of the tongue ; but M. Latreille has advanced some very 

 ingenious, and, I think, satisfactory arguments, wrhich go to prove that this part, 

 at least the tongue, in Hymenoptera, has its analogue in the intermediate tube or 

 fistula formed by the union of the two maxilliB, and which conveys the fluid 

 aliment of this order to the pharynx. As in Diptera the maxilla? sometimes 

 merge in the labium, so here the tongue (as it were, divided longitudinally) merges 

 in the maxillce, — Kirby. 



