| 1881.] Endocranium and Maxillary Suspensorium of the Bee. 361 
round the occipital foramen, as usually occurs in insects). This 
transverse ridge is intimately connected with the roots of the 
mesocephalic system; and may be deemed a condensed varia- 
tion of the bee’s suspensorium. 
The Coleoptera have presented the greatest difficulty here, a dif- 
ficulty which has been long felt by zodlogists. With the Coleoptera 
the basi-cranial region is so unlike that of other insects that a special 
nomenclature has been devised for it; and the terms mentum, sub- 
menium and gula are properly confined to the beetles (the appli- 
cation of these terms to other insects has been, in some measure, 
guess-work). The base of the head failing us as a guide, we 
started from the other end, or front. Here it was easy to find in 
the clypeus of Lachnosterna the points from which the meso- 
cephalic pillars ought to descend; and there the pillars actually 
are, but they appear as involutions of the wall, and they descend 
not to the vicinity of the occipital foramen, but further forward to 
the region of the submentum, and near them the maxillary car- 
dines are inserted. The interpretation of these observations is 
easy. Mr. Huxley has sought the representatives of the beetle’s 
basi-cranial pieces in the neck of the cockroach ; the facts now 
given appear to say that in other insects (as the bee) they are | 
condensed into the very complex and strong system of ridges 
which borders the front of the occipital opening. The Coleop- 
tera alone have these parts resolved so as to show the primitive 
arrangement. The fact that they reach the basi-cranium at the 
point of insertion of the maxillz, is in complete harmony with 
what we have seen in*the bee. We observed in the basi-occipital 
region of the head of Lachnosterna, and still more distinctly in 
the Stag-beetle, an overarching frame, enclosing a nervous canal 
Similar to the sternal canal of the thorax. We may, perhaps, 
detect traces of this in the very intricate cross-bars in advance of 
the foramen magnum of the bee; so that here the sternal canal 
and the roots of the sissorephalic and basi-cranial processes are 
all crowded together. (Thus it is not correct to say that Coleop- 
tera have no endocranium, although Gegenbaur makes a slip 
When he cites them as an example of largely developed endo- 
Cranium.) 
Only a few words can be added as to the cranial splachnodemes, 
or that part of the endocranium which consists of hardening of 
the pharynx. The mouth is floored by a stiff tongue-like plate 
