46 AUSTRALASIAN 



at the end of the tibia or long joint of the leg) on their posterior 

 legs, and as to their wings, "they have three cubital or sub- 

 costal cells — the second row from the costal or anterior edge — 

 on the front or primary wings." Here we cannot help 

 remarking how wonderful are those minute rules of organic 

 structure. Who that examined for the first time the wing of 

 a bee, and compared it with that of any other insect of the 

 same order, would imagine that the differences in the sub- 

 divisions of the membrane, which have all the appearances 

 of chance formation, and which are probably not p-ecisely the 

 same in any two examples, are yet so characteristic in their 

 arrangement as to afford an easy means of distinguishing the 



Fig. 7.— WINGS OF A BEE. 



genus to which the insect belongs ! Professor Cook gives the 

 following further details as marks of this whole genus : — 



" On the inner side of the posterior basal tarsus, opposite the pollen 

 baskets, in the neuters or workers, are rows of hair (Fig. 15) which 

 are probably used in collecting pollen. In the males, which do no 

 work except to fertilise the queens, the large compound eyes meet 

 above, crowding the three simple eyes below, while in the workers and 

 queens the simple eyes, called ocelli, are above, and the compound 

 eyes wide apart. The drones and queens have weak jaws, with a 

 rudimentary tooth, short tongues, and no pollen baskets, though they 

 have the broad tibia and wide basal tarsus." 



NERVOUS SYSTEM. 



Coming now to the special anatomy and physiology of the 

 A'pis meUifim, it may be well, in the first place, to show the 

 general arrangement of the nervous system as depicted by Mr. 

 F. R Cheshire in his admirable " Diagrams on the Anatomy and 



