608 SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



of the latter become less rigid towards tlieir margins, which are 

 membranous. Just above them the internal face of the organ is beset 

 with small modified hairs, arranged with regularity ; the anterior end 

 is armed with six pairs of straplike organs, jointed at the base and 

 minutely spined, some of which serve to sweep pollen from the 

 corolla? of flowers ; the ventral pair carry 10 or 12 modified hairs in 

 front of the joint. 



Passing by the arrangement of the muscles in the epipharynx, we 

 come to its nerves. They are derived from the supra-oesophageal 

 ganglia ; about half-way along the epipharynx they approach the 

 middle line and break up into a number of fibres which are connected 

 with the modified hairs which occur on the extremity, other fibres 

 having been already distributed to the hairs which fringe the margins 

 of the epipharynx. At the base of these hairs (which are button-like 

 and placed on pointed chitinous processes) the neurilemma forms 

 small swellings, and the axis-cylinder ends in a fusiform cell provided 

 with nucleus and nucleolus, whose distal extremity becomes attenuated 

 and terminates at the base of the protuberance which surmounts the 

 button. 



The hypopharynx has its membranous ventral wall reflected over 

 the dorsal wall of the labium and covered with small hairs ; its 

 anterior extremity carries five spines. The space between its two 

 walls opens towards the labium in front, and to the pharynx below ; 

 at this point the salivary duct also opens, and the salivary secretion 

 is thus liberated opposite to the very spot on the epipharynx above, 

 on which the terminal nerve-endings are situated. By this arrange- 

 ment the saliva, charged with digested matters, meets these nerve- 

 endings and evokes in them a gustatory sensation from the matters 

 which it holds in solution. Taking this in connection with facts 

 previously determined, it seems reasonable to conclude that gustation 

 in the Diptera commences with the paraglossae, at the point at which 

 the false tracheae open, is continued along the false trachese and 

 becomes intensified at the extremity of the epipharynx, where quite 

 a bouquet of nerve-endings occurs ; it is prolonged along the margins 

 of the epipharynx and operates at the entrance or throughout the 

 cavity of the pharynx. 



Parthenogenesis in the Bee.* — G. Ulivi considers that partheno- 

 genesis in the bee is a myth, the result of his observations being as 

 follows : — 



1. Queens are usually fertilized inside the hive. On their return 

 from the so-called " marriage-flight " they had empty spermathecas, 

 while the act of fertilization was repeatedly witnessed in the hive. 



2. They are fertilized several times. 



3. Drones are not mutilated in the act of copulation. No 

 lacerated drones were found after several careful examinations of all 

 the drones in hives in which impregnation had taken place, and the 

 whitish appendage attached to the queen's abdomen on her return 

 from the " marriage flight " was found to consist of excreta. 



* Amer. Natural., xvi. (1S82) pp. 680-1, from the report of G. F. Kiceh in 

 the ' Scientific American,' 25th March, 1882. 



