10 THE ANATOMY OF THE HONEY BEE. 



of service to future students of the embryology and physiology of 

 the bee. With this last object in view the writer has tried to sum 

 up under each heading the little that is at present known of insect 

 physiology in order to bring out more clearly what needs to be done 

 in this subject. 



II. GENERAL EXTERNAL STRUCTURE OF INSECTS. 



When we think of an animal, whether a bee, fish, or dog, we uncon- 

 sciously assume that it possesses organs which perform the same vital 

 functions that we are acquainted with in ourselves. We know, for 

 example, that an insect eats and that it dies when starved ; we realize 

 therefore that it eats to maintain life, and we assume that this involves 

 the possession of organs of digestion. We know that most insects see, 

 smell, and perform coordinated actions, and we recognize, therefore, 

 that they must have a nervous system. Their movements indicate to 

 us that they possess muscles. These assumptions, moreover, are en- 

 tirely correct, for it seems that nature has only one way of producing 

 and maintaining living beings. No matter how dissimilar two 

 animals may be in shape or even in fundamental constitution, their 

 life processes, nevertheless, are essentially identical. Corresponding 

 organs may not be the same in appearance or action but they accom- 

 plish the same ends. The jaws may work up and down or they may 

 work sidewise, but in either case they tear, crush, or chew the food 

 before it is swallowed. The stomach may be of very different shape 

 in two animals, but in each it changes the raw food into a soluble and 

 an assimilable condition. The blood may be red or colorless, con- 

 tained in tubes or not, but it always serves to distribute the prepared 

 food which diffuses into it from the alimentary canal. The situa- 

 tion of the central nervous system and the arrangement of its parts 

 may be absolutely unlike in two organisms, but it regulates the func- 

 tions of the organs and coordinates the actions of the muscles just 

 the same. 



Hence, in studying the honey bee we shall find, as we naturally 

 expect to find, that it possesses mouth organs for taking up raw food, 

 an alimentary canal to digest it, salivary glands to furnish a digestive 

 liquid, a contractile heart to keep the blood in circulation, a respira- 

 tory system to furnish fresh oxygen and carry off waste gases, ex- 

 cretory organs for eliminating waste substances from the blood, a 

 nervous system to regulate and control all the other parts, and, finally, 

 organs to produce the reproductive elements from which new indi- 

 viduals are formed to take the places of those that die. 



The study of anatomy or the structure of the organs themselves 



is inseparably connected with a study of johysiology or the life 



. functions of the animal. While physiology is a most interesting 



and important subject, and, indeed, in one sense might be said to be 



