The motions of insects are performed through the medium of an appropriate apparatus of muscles, which move the head, trunk, abdomen, viscera, and limbs, as in other parts of the animal creation. The muscles of insects generally possess very great power, as may be seen by the motion of the mandibles, and the propulsion of the bee’s sting. It is very strikingly evinced also in the flea. Latreille gives an account of one that dragged a silver cannon twenty-four times its own weight, firing it off afterwards, without exhibiting any symptom of fear. An English workman also is said to have made an ivory coach, with six horses, a coachman on the seat with a dog between his legs, a postillion, four persons in the coach, and four lacqueys behind,—the whole of which was dragged by a single flea. A further evidence of the muscular power of the flea is the extent of its leaps, which equal a space of 200 times the length of its own body. This calculation, or a very similar one, was made by Socrates, who was much ridiculed for it by Aristophanes. The poet, however, did not confine his ridicule to this minuteness of calculation, but attacked likewise the character and precepts of that great philosopher; for the whole of which satire he has justly incurred the censure of posterity.
Organs of Reproduction.
These organs, in the drone, correspond in function and denomination with those of the higher classes of animals: their chief peculiarity consists in their size, in proportion to that of the insect, and in their being more under the belly than in other insects of this tribe;—they are larger than those of the humble-bee, and the two last scales of the back and belly are larger than those of the queen or workers.
The female organs consist principally of the ovaries, the oviducts, the sperm-reservoir, and the ovipositor. In the ovaries the eggs are generated, and remain till rendered fit by impregnation, and the other circumstances necessary for their maturation, to pass through the oviducts. According to Mr. Hunter, what are called ovaries are really ducts; the eggs therefore are not formed as in other animals, in a cluster on the back, but in those ducts, of which there are six on each side. When full of eggs, they form a kind of quadrangle; these six ducts uniting on each side into one duct, this latter enters a duct common to both sides, which may be called the vagina or ovipositor. The common oviduct is the canal through which the eggs pass from the ovaries as they are called, to the ovipositor. The sperm-reservoir is the organ which, according to Herold, receives the impregnating sperm of the drone, the modus operandi of which we are unacquainted with. In the hive-bee and in some other insects, the influence of this sperm continues so long a time, and through so many generations, as almost to exceed belief. (Vide [page 31]). This led Dr. Haighton to entertain the opinion that actual contact betwixt the male sperm and the egg was not necessary, but that impregnation was effected by some unknown sympathetic influence. Messrs. Kirby and Spence have recourse to the old doctrine of an aura seminalis being all that is required to vivify the egg, and which they think may be retained for a long period. Upon this subject I have entered at some length in [page 25] et seq. The ovipositor places the eggs in their appropriate situations, and is an instrument of most curious structure. It consists of a long tube, or rather several tubes, retractile within each other, like the pieces of a telescope, and serves not only to convey the extruded eggs to the place of their destination, but acts also as a sheath for the sting, having a sharp point which makes the first impression when the creature intends to use its sting,—indeed it appears to be itself the sting. It has a slit near its extremity, through which the sting and poison are allowed to pass at the time of stinging. Some insects have occasion to bore a hole in wood, or other hard substances, to obtain a proper nidus for their eggs; the ovipositor is their operating instrument, and will either saw or bore a passage to the desired place. Thus it appears that this curiously complex apparatus, which in the bee is used both as a weapon of defence and offence, is a hollow horny tube or scabbard, inclosing two bearded darts, which can be thrust a short way beyond the sheath, though the whole appears to the naked eye like the solid point of the minutest needle.
This apparatus is moved by muscles which, though invisible to the eye, are yet strong enough to force the sting to the depth of one twelfth of an inch through the thick cuticle of a man’s hand. It is articulated by thirteen scales to the lower end of the insect’s body; and at its root are situated two glands or ducts, from which the poison is secreted: these glands uniting in one duct, eject the venomous liquid along the groove formed by the junction of the two piercers. There are four beards on the outside of each piercer: when the insect is prepared to sting, one of these piercers, having its point a little longer or more in advance than the other, first darts into the flesh, and being fixed by its foremost beard, the other strikes in also, and they alternately penetrate deeper and deeper, till they acquire a firm hold of the flesh with their hooks, and then follows the sheath entering and conveying the poison into the wound. The action of the sting, says Paley, affords an example of the union of chemistry and mechanism: of chemistry, in respect to the venom which can produce such powerful effects: of mechanism, as the sting is a compound instrument. The machinery would have been comparatively useless had it not been for the chemical process, by which in the insect’s body honey is converted into poison; and on the other hand, the poison would have been ineffectual, without an instrument to wound, and a syringe to inject it.
In consequence of the barbed form of its sting the bee can seldom disengage itself without leaving behind it the whole apparatus, and even part of its bowels; so that her life is usually sacrificed to her passion.
“Illis ira modum supra est, læsæque venenum
Morsibus inspirant, et spicula cæca relinquunt,
Affixæ venis, animasque in vulnera ponunt.”
Virgil
The sting of the queen-bee is longer and stouter than that of the working-bee, and bends a little under her belly. She is not eager to employ it; and from what has been said above, of the fatality which usually attends its use, conjecture has been busy as to the cause of her extreme caution in this respect. Dr. Evans observes, that it cannot arise from any selfish consideration, founded on an instinctive knowledge of the danger she thereby incurs; since the common bees, who run the same risk when they sting, are ready to attack upon the slightest provocation. “Is it owing,” says he, “to a consciousness of the importance of her life to the community? or may we rather ascribe it to the dignified and generous forbearance so frequently exemplified in the lion or English mastiff?”
The reluctance of queens to eject their stings, led Pliny and others to imagine that they did not possess any. Their extreme caution in this respect, and the fatal consequences usually attending a departure from it, gave birth to the following jeux d’esprit. In consequence of Pope Urban the Eighth being suspected of a stronger attachment to the French than to the Spaniards, a Frenchman who had observed three bees quartered upon his arms, wrote this Latin verse.