54 AUSTRALASIAN 
or simply through its mouth; but the statement of Muller, that 
when gathering pollen from some kinds of flowers the bee 
ejects a little honey on the anthers through its suction tube— 
which in another part of his work he calls the “ proboscis” for 
shortness—would incline us to suppose that the honey may be 
ejected into the cells in the same manner. 
The maxillz, or so-called lower jaws, form the under sheath 
of the ligula and palpi when at rest, and the whole organ is 
then folded under the lower part of the head. 
THE ANTENNZ. 
The antenne, or “feelers,” as they are commonly and not 
inappropriately called, are very sensitive organs of touch-sen- 
sations, and, beyond all donbt, of vital importance to the 
insect. Huber tried experiments with queens deprived of the 
antenne, and found that the loss of one was not very injurious; 
but when both were gone, the bee became apparently delirious, 
avoided the worker bees, dropped her eggs at random about 
the hive, and rushed towards the opening, as if to escape. 
Having introduced a second queen, similarly mutilated, it was 
found that they had both lost their natural instinct for a com- 
bat, and met several times without exhibiting the smallest 
resentment. The worker bees did not seem to distinguish 
their own mutilated queen from the strange one, and both were 
left to do as they liked ; but when Huber introduced a third 
unmutilated queen, the workers seized her, bit her, and confined 
her so closely that she could hardly move. When he removed 
this last and one of the others, and left one fertile but muti- 
lated queen in charge of the hive, she left it, and tried to fly 
away, but being unable, she fell and died on the ground. Mr. 
Harris mentions also that worker bees, if deprived of the 
antenne, and allowed to fly, become incapable of recognising 
their own hive again, and are hopelessly lost as to their where- 
abouts. Huber tried other experiments by dividing the bees 
of one stock by two fine wire gratings placed so far apart that 
the antenne of the bees on each side could not meet, and after- 
wards removing one of the gratings, so that they could touch 
each other; and from the results of these experiments he drew 
the conclusion that they could actually communicate intelligence 
to each other by means of their autenne. There is, at all 
