The breathing apparatus of bees is a very remarkable feature: they have no lungs, but, instead, air-vessels, or tubes and bladders ramifying through every part of the frame. The external openings of these, which are called "spiracles," are found in the sides of their bodies behind the wings. Two pairs of them are located in the thorax, and one pair on each side of the scales of the abdomen. They would be difficult to show in a drawing, as the multitude of hairs which protect them are in the way of getting at a very distinct delineation. The writer has traced their oval form by the aid of Messrs. R. and J. Beck's "Binocular Microscope," and exceedingly interesting objects they appeared. From the circumstance of bees breathing through these orifices in their bodies, it will not be difficult to understand how sadly the little creatures must be inconvenienced when by accident they fall on loose mould, and thus have their breathing pores choked with dust; it also shows how needful it is to prevent bees being besmeared with honey (by using bad appliances for feeding), which is still more injurious to them. The air-vessels are all that they possess of a circulating system, as bees have neither lungs, heart, liver, nor blood. It appears, however, that a white fluid matter, called "chyle," which in degree answers the purpose of blood, is produced in the intestines, nourishes the body, receives the oxygen from the air-vessels, and generates that animal warmth so necessary for the insect's well-being--warmth which, as a matter of course, say Schmid and Kleine in their "Leading Threads," settles that it is incorrect to call the insect a cold-blooded animal. Bees have the power of counteracting superabundant heat by perspiration. Not unfrequently, on a hot summer's morning, a good deal of moisture may be noticed at the entrance of a crowded hive, which the inmates have been enabled to throw off. This is a healthy sign, because a sign of great numerical strength. The humming sound always to be heard in a beehive is produced by breathing. § IV. THE ABDOMEN AND SECRETIVE ORGANS. The abdomen, attached to the posterior part of the thorax by a slender ligament, has, for an outer covering; six folds or scales of unequal breadth, overlapping each other, and contains the honey-bag, or first stomach, the ventricle, or true stomach (Plate II. Figs. 1 and 2 _f_), with other intestines, to be hereafter referred to.