GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 29 



■milk are composed of small clusters of acini, which take their 

 secretions from the blood and empty them into vessels ter- 

 minating at the surface of the breast. The action of the 

 iipper gland (39-40), in the bee, is exactly similar to the 

 action of those lacteal glands, and the fact that this gland is 

 absent in the queen and in the drone is, to us, positive evidence 

 that the chylous or lacteal food (given the larvae) is pro- 

 duced by these glands alone, and not by the direct action of 

 the digesting-stomach. 



67. The food arriving in the stomach is mixed with the 

 gastric juice, which helps its transformation, and the undu- 

 lating motion of the stomach sends it to its lower extremity, 

 toward the intestines. But, before entering into them, the 

 chyme receives the product of several glands which have been 

 ■named Malpighian tubes (e, fig. 15) from the scientist Mal- 



pighi, who was the first to notice them. A grinding motion 

 of the muscles placed at the junction of the stomach witli the 

 intestines, acting on the grains of pollen not yet sufficiently 

 dissolved, prepares them to yield their assimilable particles to 

 the absorbing cells in the walls of the small intestine. Thence 

 they go into the large intestine, from which the refuse matter 

 is discharged by the worker-bee, while on the wing. We 

 italicize the words, because this fact has considerable bearing 

 on the health of the bees, when contined by cold or other causes, 

 as will be seen further on. (639.) 



68. "The nervous system (fig. 16) of the honey-bee, the 

 seat of sensation and of the understanding, is very interesting. 

 The honey-bee, more perfect in organization than the butterfly, 

 begins as a larva deficient in legs, very much inferior to the 

 caterpillar from which the butterfly proceeds. The drones, al- 

 though larger than the workers, especially in the head, have a 

 smaller brain. This state of things coincides with the fact that 

 the drones are not intelligent, while no one can refuse gleams 

 of intelligence to the worker-bees, as nurses and builders. ' ' — 

 (Girard.) 



"69. The heart, or organ of the circulation of the blood, 

 formed of five elongated rooms, in the abdomen, is terminated 



