Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Entomology.djvu/189

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
OF INSECTS.
183

instances of this. When to all these we add the negative consideration, that the antennæ 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 openings in the posterior part of the head, visible in Cicada; M. J. Müller, 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 important function under consideration; besides, they have been observed, (nay, they may be 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 distinctness in many tribes, it has 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 it in a very inferior degree, it must have its seat at the