GENEBAL CHARACTHBISTICS. 27 



grains, from returning to the honoy-saek. Cheshire afflrms 

 that this stoinaeli-niouth, whicli |)rotnules into tlic honey- 

 sack, acts as a sort of sieve, and strains the lioiiey from the 

 grains of pollen floating in it, appropriating tliejn for di- 

 gestion, and aUowing the honey to flow back into the sack. 

 The Itee eouhi thns, at will, " eat or drink from the mixed 

 diet she carries." 



«-!:. According to Schonfeld, {Illustrierte Bii'iienzeitung) 

 the chyle, or milky food which is used to feed the young lar- 

 vae, — and which we have shown to be, most probably, the 

 product of the upper pair of glands (39-40),— would be 

 produced from the digesting-stomaeh, which he and others 

 call chyle-stomach. Although we are not competent in the 

 matter, we would remark that the so-called chyle-stomach 

 produces chyme, or digested food, from which the chyle, or 

 nourishing constituent, is absorbed by the cell-lining of the 

 ^stomach and of the intestines, and Anally converted into 

 blood. We do not see how this chyle could be thickened and 

 regurgitated by the stomach to be returned to the mouth. 



65. In mammals, the chyliferous vessels do not exist in 

 the stomach, but in the intestine, the function of the stom- 

 ach being only to digest the food bj"^ changing it into chyme, 

 from which the chyle is afterwards separated, for the use of 

 the body. 



66. Again, in the mammals, the glands which produce 

 milk are composed of small clusters of acini, which take 

 their secretions from the blood and empty them into vessels 

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

 upper 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, pos- 

 itive evidence that the chylous or lacteal food (given the 

 larvffi) is produced by these glands alone, and not by the 

 direct action of the digesting-stomaeh. 



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



