GENERAL HISTORY OF BEES. 
43 
velum of the spur upon it, removes, by the combined 
action of the comb and the velum, all excrescences or 
soilure from it, and this process it repeats until satisfied 
with the cleanliness of the organ: and this it may be 
frequently seen doing. This arrangement proves how 
essential to the well-being of the insect is the condition 
of its antennae, the sinus, or strigilis, or curry-comb, as 
it may be called, being always adapted in size to the thick¬ 
ness of the antennae, for insects being always both riglit- 
and left-handed, they therefore use the limb on eacli side 
to brush the antenna of that side. The palmse and other 
joints of the tarsus of the fore legs are greatly dilated in 
many males, or fringed externally with stiff setae, which 
give it as efficient a dilatation as if it were the expansion 
of its corneous substance. The anterior tarsi of the 
females are likewise fringed with hair, to enable them to 
sweep off and collect the pollen, and to assist also in the 
construction and furnishing of their burrows. The in¬ 
termediate tarsi are as well often very much extended 
in the males, being considerably longer than those of the 
other legs. The use of the claws at the apex of the tarsi 
is evidently to enable the insect to cling to surfaces. 
The manner in which the bee convevs either the 
pollen, or other material it purposes carrying home, to 
the posterior legs, or venter, which is to bear it, is very 
curious. The rapidity of the motions of its legs is then 
very great; so great, indeed, as to make it very difficult 
to follow them; but it seems first to collect its material 
gradually with its mandibles, from which the anterior 
tarsi gather it, and that on each side passes successively 
the grains of which it consists to the intermediate legs 
by multiplicated scrapings and twistings of the limbs; 
this then passes it on by similar manoeuvres, and depo- 
