A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working EntomologistPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Science
A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working Entomologist
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Insects
while the latest treatise of Graber on the organs of hearing in
insects opposes Hicks’s theory of the olfactory function of the
nerve-end apparatus in the halteres, wings, etc., and argues for the
auditory nature of these structures. Finally, according to Voges,
the sense of smell is not localized, but spread over the whole body.
My own observations on different groups of insects agree, in
general, with those of Perris, Forel, and Hauser, without being in a
position to confirm or deny the varying relations of the Hemiptera.
That irritating odorous substances (chloroform, acetic acid) cause
the limbs to move in sympathy with the stimulus, I have seen several
times in Acanthosoma; still it may be a gustatory rather than
olfactory stimulus.
Turning now from speculation and simple observation to exact
anatomical and histological data, the nerve-end apparatus seems to
have a distinct reference to the perception of odors. It comprises a
structure composed of nervous substances which are enclosed in a
chitinous tube, and either only stand in relation to the surrounding
bodies by the perforated point, or pass to the surface as free
nerve-fibrillæ.
In insects there is a remarkable and fundamental difference in the
structures of the parts supposed to be the organs of smell. Erichson
was acquainted only with the “pori” covered by a thin membrane; but
Burmeister, in his careful work on the antennæ of the lamellicorns,
distinguished pits at the bottom of which hairs rise from a cup-like
tubercle, from those which were free from hairs. Leydig afterwards
was the first to regard as olfactory organs the so-called pegs
(_kegel_), a short, thick, hair-like structure distinctly perforated
at the tip, which had already, by Lespès in Cercopis, etc., been
described as a kind of tactile papilla. Other very peculiar
olfactory organs of different form, Forel (Fourmis de la Suisse)
discovered in the antennæ of ants, which Lubbock incorrectly
associated with the nerve-end apparatus found by Hicks in other
insects.
As the final result of his researches Kraepelin states that the great
variety of antennal structures previously described may be referred to a
single common fundamental type of a more or less developed free or
sunken hair-like body which stands in connection by means of a wide
pore-canal with a many-nucleated ganglion-cell. The latter sends only a
relatively slender nerve-fibre (axial cord) through the pore-canal into
the hair; but the same is enclosed by epithelial cells which surround
the pore-canal.
Hauser’s researches on the organs of smell in insects were so carefully
made and conclusive that our readers will, we feel sure, be glad to have
laid before them in detail the facts which prove so satisfactorily that
the antennæ of most insects are olfactory rather than auditory in their
functions.
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