With their extraordinary devotion to sweets, bees can hardly but be possessed of a strong sense of taste, though in consequence of their being detected occasionally lapping the impure liquids from stable or other fœtid drains, Huber considered it the least perfect of their senses. But it is now ascertained that bees, like most animals, are fond of salt, and they therefore resort to dunghills and stagnant marshes, from which they are doubtless able to extract saline draughts. It cannot be denied, however, that, according to our ideas, their taste is otherwise at fault; thus it sometimes happens that, where onions and leeks abound and are allowed to run to seed, bees are so anxious to complete their winter stores, that, from feeding on these plants, a disagreeable flavour is communicated to the honey (see Chap. VI. § iii.). § III. THE THORAX AND ORGANS OF MOTION. The thorax or chest approaches in figure to a sphere, and is united to the head by a thread-like ligament. This is the centre of the organs of motion. Here are attached both the muscles that move the legs and wings, and the legs and wings themselves. In Fig. 1 of Plate II., _b, b, b_ show the muscles that move the wings; _e, e_, the bases of the wings. These appendages consist of two pairs of unequal size, which are arranged to hook together. In Plate I. Fig. A will be seen the margins of the two wings. In Fig. B are the eighteen or twenty hooks placed on the anterior margin of the hinder wing, whilst the posterior margin of the fore wing is beautifully folded over to receive them, so that, when employed in fanning for ventilation, the two wings on each side act as one, and present an unbroken surface to the air. The wings of workers are larger than those of the queen, but those of drones are much larger still. The bee has six legs, three on each side. Each leg is composed of several joints, having articulations like a man's arm, for the thigh, the leg, and the foot. The foremost pair of these are the shortest; the middle pair are somewhat longer, and with them the bee unloads the little pellets from the baskets on her thighs; the hindmost are the longest of all. On the outside of the middle joint of these last there is, in each leg, a small cavity, in the form of a marrow-spoon, called the "pollen basket." The pollen is conveyed from the front to the second pair of legs, and from these to the receptacles in the hind ones. Fig. 2 _b_ in Plate I. shows the inner side of the hind leg and pollen brush; 2 _b*_, the outer side and pollen basket. On entering a flower a bee often covers itself with pollen, and hence the need for the brash apparatus on reaching home.