BEE MANUAL. 53 
shown at dd. The under-lip, or labium (not seen in the figure) 
has a broad base, called the mentum, which forms the floor of 
the mouth, and at the same time the root of the tongue, or 
ligula, f, and of the labial palpi, ¢e. The ligula itself is some- 
times called a proboscis, a name which is, in most minds, asso- 
ciated with the trunk of the elephant, which is a hollow tubular 
prolongation of the nasal organ. This is no ways analogous with 
the proboscis of insects in general, and of the honey-bee in 
particular ; the latter is a prolongation of the labium, as above 
mentioned, which organ is capable of being pushed forward and 
drawn back into the under cavity of the head, carrying the 
ligula of course with it. The labial palpi, together with the 
maxille, appear to be brought into use to assist the ligula, or 
tongue, in conveying nectar from the flowers to the honey sac 
of the bee. The end of the tongue is furnished with a spoon- 
shaped hollow on the under side, which opens into a capillary 
tube on the upper side, covered with whorls of hair, as is also 
the end of the ligula. When the bee is sipping, the liquid 
enters the capillary tube, and the tongue is drawn back by 
muscles at the base into what Herman Muller terms a suctorial 
apparatus formed by the labial palpi and maxille. In his 
valuable work on “ The Fertilisation of Flowers,” he beauti- 
fully describes the above process as follows :— 
‘“ When the bee is sucking honey which is only just within her reach, 
all the movable joints of its suction apparatus, cardines, the chitinous 
retractors at the base of the mentum, laminz (maxille), labial palpi, 
and tongue, are fuliy extended, except that the two proximal joints 
of the labial palpi are closely applied to the tongue below, and the 
lamine to the mentum and hinder part of the tongue above. But as 
soon as the whorls of hair at the point of the tongue are wet with 
honey, the bees, by rotating the retractors, draw back the mentum, 
and with it the tongue, so far that the laminz now reach as far for- 
ward as the labial palpi; and now labial palpi and laminz together, 
lying close upon the tongue, and overlapping at their sides, form a 
tube, out of which only a part of the tongue protrudes. But almost 
simultaneously with these movements, the bee draws back the basal 
part of its tongue into the hollow end of the mentum, and so draws 
the tip of the tongue, moist with honey, into the tube, where the 
honey is sucked in by an enlargement of the foregut, known as the 
sucking stomach, whose action is signified externally by a swelling of 
the abdomen.” 
Doubts have been expressed as to whether the bee empties 
the contents of its honey sac into the cells through its proboscis 
4 
