98 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



surpassingly beautiful suitability of the form now ex- 

 plained, for, although a tube would be fatal, a tubular 

 form is essential, as we shall presently see. Large 

 quantities of nectar may safely enough be gathered 

 outside the ligula in contact with the air, but small 

 quantities so collected would, in warm and dry 

 weather, inevitably thicken into a glue, which would 

 at once fix the poor little tongue, and for the time, 

 if not altogether, stop its labours. Sparing supplies 

 are, therefore, made to pass through the centre and 

 side ducts. The former is doubly protected from 

 evaporation, and by its channel the tiniest stream 

 would be as limpid at the mouth as when it left the 

 bouton ; while the side ducts, although more exposed, 

 only permit of such inconsiderable evaporation that 

 no risk whatever exists, while the pollen grains that 

 may perchance enter can be cleaned from it in the 

 manner we have already seen. 



Cook says the sac to which we just now directed 

 our attention "may be distended with nectar, as it 

 has connection with the tube of the mentum " — 

 statements utterly at variance with the anatomy of 

 the parts, and capable of complete refutation by a 

 very elementary experiment. If hatching brood be 

 removed from the hive to a position too dry or too 

 cool, some of the bees will only succeed in freeing 

 their heads from the cells, and will, in this position, 

 die. Of course, they have not fed, and yet in the 

 majority of cases the tongue pouch will be fully dis- 

 tended, because the enforced stillness of the body 

 and activity of the head, has determined an excess or 

 blood into the latter. Many will like to repeat my 



