48 SENSE OF TASTE. 



attempted its execution. In the performance of the act 

 of pasting up the mouth, Mr. Duncan recommends the 

 cutting off the sting, and we recommend the same plan 

 to be adopted when the bee is blindfolded, or the expe- 

 rimentalist will most probably pay dearly for his temerity. 

 On the whole, we are greatly disposed to call in question 

 the validity or the veracity of those pretended discoveries, 

 which are built on such improbable, and almost impracti- 

 cable experiments ; for the man who will attempt to blind- 

 fold a bee, must have a peculiar method of handling 

 that insect, to which we profess ourselves to be decided 

 strangers. 



In regard to the sense of taste, it is perhaps the most 

 defective and the most indefinite of all the senses of the 

 bees, and the general habits of the insect prompt the 

 belief that it cannot be reduced to any fixed principle, 

 and it is rather singular that scarcely one of the modern 

 naturalists has ventured upon determining its locality. 

 All that has hitherto been done is to establish its claim 

 to purity, and even on that point several very eminent 

 naturalists hold a contrary opinion. Huber considers the 

 taste of the bee to be very depraved, on account of its 

 partaking of offensive liquids ; but in this instance, Huber 

 was rather begging the question, for of what offensive or 

 fetid liquids do the bees partake ? We are not aware of 

 any ; on the contrary, we know of only one liquid of which 

 they partake, independently of their natural food, honey, 

 and that is water. Huber, however, is according to his 

 usual custom guilty of gross inconsistency in regard to the 

 purity of the taste of the bee, for he attempts in the first 

 instance to demonstrate the defective taste of the bee, 

 arising from its imbibing the impure fluid from corrupt 

 places, and then, in the second instance, to prove from 

 various circumstances the extreme purity of its taste. 

 Mr. Duncan, however, in order to establish the defective 



