MANUAL OP THE APIARY. 61 



into the gossamer thread. Bees and wasps use this saliva in 

 building their structures. With it and mud some wasps 

 make mortar ; with it and wood, others their paper cells ; 

 with it and wax, the bee fashions the ribbons that are to form 

 the beautiful comb. 



Lining the entire alimentary canal are mucous glands which 

 secrete a viscid fluid that keeps the tube soft, and promotes 

 the passage of food. 



The true stomach (Fig. 9, h) is very muscular, and often a 

 gizzard, as in the crickets, where its interior is lined with 

 teeth. The interior of the stomach is glandular, for secreting 

 the gastric juice which is to liquify the food, that it may be 

 absorbed, or pass through the walls of the canal into the 

 blood. Attached to the lower portion of the stomach are 

 numerous urinary tubes (Kg. 9, c) though Cuvier, and even 

 Kirby, call these bile tubes. Siebold thinks some of the 

 mucous glands secrete bile, and others act as a pancreas. 



The intestine when short, as in larvae and most carnivora, 

 is straight and but little if any longer than the abdomen, 

 while in most plant eaters it is long and thus zig-zag in its 

 course. Strange as it may seem, the fecal pellets of some 

 insects are beautiful in form, and of others pleasant to the 

 taste. In some caterpillars they are barrel-shaped, artistically 

 fluted, of brilliant hue, and if fossilized, would be greatly 

 admired, as have been the coprolites — fossil feces of quadru- 

 peds — ^if set as gems in jewelry. As it is, they would form 

 no mean parlor ornament. In other insects, as the Aphides 

 or plant-lice, the excrement, as well as the fluid that escapes 

 in some species from special tubes called the nectaries, is very 

 sweet, and in absence of floral nectar, will often be appropri- 

 ated by bees and conveyed to the hives. Imagination would 

 make this a bitter draught, so here, as elsewhere in life, the 

 bitter and sweet are mingled. In those insects that suck 

 their food, as bees, butterflies, moths, two-wing flies and bugs, 

 the feces are watery or liquid, while in case of solid food the 

 excrement is solid. 



SECRETORY ORGANS OF INSECTS. 



I have already spoken of the salivary glands, which Kirby 

 gives as distinct from the true silk-secreting tubes, though 



