SWAMMERDAM 189 



cealed in the winged bee, it is external in the pupa, and 

 its hard parts are cast together with the pupal skin. 

 His figures show all the essential parts of the sting — the 

 sheath, the two darts with their levers, the barbed teeth, 

 the poison-sac with its gland and duct. He notes the 

 firmness of the poison-sac, and says that if the abdomen 

 is opened and the sac grasped, the whole sting may be 

 plucked out without tearing. He was accustomed to 

 mount the sting in balsam — a method of his own devis- 

 ing. He examined the action of the darts and their 

 barbs by causing bees to sting leather gloves and the 

 thicker parts of the human skin ; he remarked the alter- 

 nate action of the darts, and the tendency of the sting 

 to penetrate deeper and deeper. In his thirst for know- 

 ledge he often pressed a bee's sting into his own skin, 

 and found that if the poison is prevented from entering, 

 the pain is nothing. When bee's venom was taken into 

 the mouth, he observed that it caused a flow of saliva, 

 and an action upon the tongue like that of the root of 

 Pyrethrum or of spirits of wine. The poison of the 

 queen was more virulent than that of the worker, and 

 that of a wasp more potent still. 



I must forego the opportunity, so seductive to an 

 insect-anatomist, of discussing Swammerdam's descrip- 

 tion of the internal organs of the bee. They are won- 

 derfully exact and detailed, and would rank with the 

 best work done in modern times. General observations 

 now and then show how wide was his knowledge of 

 insects and allied animals. He remarks that insects, 

 spiders and crabs cast the skin, and, unlike vertebrates, 

 have their muscles enclosed by the skeleton.^ Few 

 naturalists of his own generation could have penned 

 such a sentence as the following, though it has since 



1 Pp. 403, 444. 



