ANTS AND SOME OTHER INSECTS. 25 



With some difficulty I next undertook to bring artefact a very 

 close to a bee resting on a Dahlia. But the attention of the bee 

 was so deeply engrossed by the Dahlia that I had to repeat the ex- 

 periment four or five times till I succeeded in bringing the honey 

 within reach of her proboscis. The insect at once began to suck 

 tip the honey from the paper-flower. I marked the bee's back with 

 blue paint so that I might be able to recognise her, and repeated 

 the experiment with /? and e. In these cases one of the bees was 

 painted yellow, the other white. 



Soon the blue bee, which had in the meantime gone to the 

 hive, returned, flew at once to a, first hovering about it dubiously, 

 then to 8, where she fed, then again to a, but not to the Dahlias. 

 Later the yellow bee returned to (3 and fed, and flew to a and 8 

 where she again fed, but gave as little heed to the Dahlias as did 

 the blue bee. 



Thereupon the white bee returned seeking e, but failing to find 

 it, at once went to feeding on some of the Dahlias. But she tarried 

 only a moment on each Dahlia as if tortured by the id^e fixe of 

 honey. She returned to the artefacts, the perception of which, 

 however, she was not quite able to associate with the memory of 

 the honey flavor. At last she found a separate piece of e, which 

 happened to be turned down somewhat behind, and began lapping 

 up the honey. 



Thenceforth the three painted bees, and these alone, returned 

 regularly to the artefacts and no longer visited the Dahlias. The 

 fact is of great importance that the painted bees entirely of their 

 own accord, undoubtedly through an instinctive inference from 

 analogy, discovered the other artefacts as soon as their attention 

 had been attracted by the honey on one of them, notwithstanding 

 the fact that the artefacts were some distance from one another and 

 of different colors. For were not the Dahlias, too, which they had 

 previously visited, of different colors? Thus the blue bee flew to 

 a, (3, y, and 8, the yellow to j3, a, 8, and y, the white e, a, ft, and 8. 

 Matters continued thus for half an hour. The hidden green was 

 not found, evidently because it was indistinguishable from the green 

 foliage. 



