148 



ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 



Away therefore 11 minutes. 



10 



8 minutes, 



&c., &c., the way being now clearly well learnt. 



But that the sense of direction is of much service to 

 bees in finding the locality of their hives seems to be 

 indicated by the following observation thus narrated, on 

 the authority of the authors themselves, by Messrs. Kirby 

 and Spence : 



In vain, during my stay at St. Nicholas, I sallied out at 

 every outlet to try to gain some idea of the extent and form of 

 the town. Trees, trees, trees, still met me, and intercepted the 

 view in every direction ; and I defy any inhabitant bee of this 

 rural metropolis, after once quitting its hive, ever to gain a 

 glimpse of it again until nearly perpendicularly over it. The 

 bees, therefore, .... must be led to their abodes by instinct, <tc. 



The observation, however, is not so conclusive as its 

 authors suppose ; for there is nothing to show that the 

 bees did not take note of particular objects on their ac- 

 customed routes, and so learn these routes by stages. It 

 would be worth while in this connection to try the effect 

 of hooding the eyes of a bee, or, if this were deemed too 

 disturbing an experiment, removing the hive bodily to a 

 distance from its accustomed site, and observing whether 

 the bees start away boldly as before for long flights, or 

 learn their new routes by stages. 



In this connection I may quote the following. 



Mr. John Topham, of Marlborough House, Torquay, 

 writing to ' Nature,' l says : 



On October 29, 1873, I removed a hive of bees in my 

 garden, after it was quite dark, for a distance of 12 yards from 

 the place in which it had stood for several months; ard 

 between its original situation and the new one there was a 

 bushy evergreen tree, so that all sight of its former place was 



1 Vol. ix. p. 484. 



