A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 153 
baffled nature, do not tend to loveliness in any of 
her sex. But her positive and almost terrifying 
ugliness, when looked at so disadvantageously, is 
soon forgotten as one comes to realise her 
abounding possession of that other kind of beauty 
—the beauty of utility. 
To the naked eye her tongue is a bright brown, 
shining piece, protruding from her mouth, and 
hanging down with much the same appearance as 
an elephant’s trunk. Under the microscope it is 
soon seen that this is not a tongue in the proper 
sense, but a continuation of the under-lip. It 
consists of six or seven different parts capable of 
being fitted together lengthways. There is a 
central part, longer than the rest, with a hairy 
spatula at its end, and when the other parts are 
closed about this, the whole virtually forms a tube 
within a tube. The spatula does the lapping 
when only minute quantities of fluid have to be 
taken up, and these pass into the mouth more by 
capillary attraction than by actual sucking; but 
when there is a brimming cup of nectar to be 
emptied, the whole mechanism of the tongue is 
brought into play. The longitudinal strips are 
placed together edge to edge, and the liquid is 
drawn out of the flower-cup by the action of the 
tongue-muscles in much the same way as water is 
lifted by a pump. 
Now that we have the head of the bee under 
observation, many curious things about it can be 
