50 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 65 



the organs receiving gustatory stimuli into inner gustatory organs 

 and outer ones. The inner ones found inside the buccal cavity are 

 located on the epipharynx as minute pit-pegs or cones. The outer 

 ones are found outside the buccal cavity on the various mouth-parts. 

 They are cones and pit-pegs of various sizes and shapes. 



Rohler (1906) found various kinds of sense hairs on the mouth- 

 parts of the grasshopper, Tryxalis. He thinks that some of these 

 serve mechanically to examine the food, while the others function as 

 gustatory organs. 



The following is a brief discussion of the experimental work per- 

 taining to the sense of taste. 



Forel (1873, 1908) was apparently the first to determine experi- 

 mentally that insects show preferences between foods. When mor- 

 phine and strychnine are mixed with honey, he says that ants do not 

 at first recognize these substances by smell, but after eating a little 

 honey containing these substances, they immediately leave it. Ants 

 do not always know how to distinguish foods containing injurious 

 substances, because when he fed them honey containing phosphorus, 

 they gorged themselves with it and many of them soon died. In 

 repeating the experiments of Plateau (1885) and Will (1885), Forel 

 amputated the antennae and the four palpi of several wasps. When 

 he fed them honey containing quinine, they soon left it after eating a 

 little of it, but greedily ate pure honey not containing quinine. From 

 this he concludes that the gustatory faculty is independent of the 

 antennae and palpi, and that it resides in the mouth. He agrees with 

 Plateau and Will that the amputation of the palpi in no way modifies 

 the olfactory, gustatory or masticatory faculties. He thinks that 

 the palpi serve as special tactile organs. 



Will (1885) carried on a series of experiments to demonstrate the 

 sense of taste in insects. He ascertained that wasps, bees, and bumble- 

 bees soon leave foods containing alum, quinine, and salt after eating 

 a little of them. He thinks that the gustatory perception lasts a rather 

 long time, because insects, after eating foods containing these sub- 

 stances, clean their mouths for several minutes and then, when given 

 pure honey, " taste " it several times before definitely beginning to 

 eat. As a general rule, Will found that the larvae are more " diffi- 

 cult to please " in the choice of their foods than the imago insects. 



Lubbock (1899) noticed that some individual ants seem to possess 

 a finer sense of taste than others, and he thinks this is partially ex- 

 plained by the fact that the number of taste-pits is not the same in all 

 individuals. He concludes " that the organs of taste in insects are 



