182 
OF INSECTS. 
out at pleasure, for the purpose of making & puncture in 
the leaves, stem, or bark, of the particular plant which is 
suited to the nourishment of its young. In a sheath which 
divides and opens whenever the organ is used, there is 
enclosed a compact, solid, dentated stem, along which runs 
a gutter or groove, by which groove, after the penetration 
is effected, the egg, assisted in some cases by a peristaltic 
motion, passes to its destined lodgement.* In the oestrus 
or gad-fly, the wimble draws out like the pieces of a spy¬ 
glass; the last piece is armed with three hooks, and is able 
to bore through the hide of an ox. Can anything more 
be necessary to display the mechanism, than to relate the 
fact? [PI. XXXII. fig. 3, 4.] 
III. The stings of insects, though for a different pur¬ 
pose, are, in their structure, not unlike the piercer. The 
sharpness to which the point in all of them is wrought; the 
temper and firmness of the substance of which it is compos¬ 
ed; the strength of the muscles by which it is darted out, 
compared with the smallness and weakness of the insect, 
and with the soft and friable texture of the rest of the body; 
are properties of the sting to be noticed, and not a little to 
be admired. The sting of a bee will pierce through a goat¬ 
skin glove. It penetrates the human flesh more read¬ 
ily than the finest point of a needle. The action of the 
sting affords an example of the union of chemistry and 
mechanism, such as, if it be not a proof of contrivance, 
nothing is. First, as to the chemistry; how highly con¬ 
centrated must be the venom, which, in so small a quantity, 
can produce such powerful effects! And in the bee we 
may observe, that this venom is made from honey, the only 
food of the insect, but the last material from which I should 
have expected that an exalted poison could, by any pro¬ 
cess or digestion whatsoever, have been prepared. In the 
next place, with respect to the mechanism, the sting is not 
a simple, but a compound instrument. The visible sting, 
though drawn to a point exquisitely sharp, is, in strictness, 
only a sheath; for, near to the extremity maybe perceived 
by the microscope two minute orifices, from which orifices, 
in the act of stinging, and, as it should seem, after the point 
* There are numerous variations in the structure of this organ; an exam¬ 
ple of the one just mentioned is seen in the ovipositor of the buprestis , 
Fig. 9. It consists of three long and sharp laminae, the two lateral ones 
forming a sheath to the intermediate one, which is the tube which conveys 
the egg. In some cases the instrument forms a saw, or what Paley here 
calls a dentated stem, which conveys the eggs, as in the tenthredo , cicidce , 
cimbex , &c.— Paxton. 
