OF INSECTS. 
183 
instances of this. When to all these we add the 
negative consideration, that the antemne are strangers 
to taste and smell* and subservient to touch only in 
a secondary degree, no alternative seems left but to 
regard them as organs of hearing. 
It may be proper, however, to add, that Latreille 
considered the seat of this sense to be two small 
apertures which he detected near the inner edge of 
the eye in Lepidoptera ; M. de Blainville, two open- 
ings in the posterior part of the head, visible in 
Cicada; M. J. Muller, two cavities in the dorsal 
portion of the metathorax, which he noticed in a 
species of Gryllus; and, finally, M. Treviranus, a 
sort of membranous drum, situated on the forehead 
of certain nocturnal Lepidoptera. All these parts 
are too inconspicuous to have any claim to the im- 
portant function under consideration ; besides, they 
have been observed, (nay, they may he safely affirmed 
to exist) only in a few species, whereas the sense 
that has been ascribed to them must be universal 
throughout the class. 
Taste is one of the senses whose organs have not 
been fully determined. Judging from analogy, it 
should reside in that part of the mouth corresponding 
to the tongue, and as that exists in tolerable distinct- 
ness in many tribes, it lias usually been assigned 
thereto. The membrane which lines the interior 
of the oral cavity, doubtlessly shares in this function ; 
and in the suctorial races, which probably possess i* 
in a very inferior degree, it must have its seat at the 
