112 



HAilDWlCKE'S SCIENCE. G;0SS1P. 



and subsequently in the Bay of Biscay. He re- 

 marked that many missing liulcs will probably be 

 found hereafter, and that uoiuenclature will be 

 benefited thereby; thus ii Echinothuria and Calveria 

 really belong to the same genus, one of these names 

 may be discarded. In support of this view he 

 stated that the paleozoic Euomphaliis is identical, 

 as regards the characters of the shell, with the 

 recent Homalogyra. 



Bees and Wasps.— Sir John Lubbock who, it 

 will be remembered, gave some practical proofs of his 

 acquaintance with waspsat theBrighton BritishAsso- 

 ciation Meeting, has just read a paper on the above 

 subject at the Linneau Society. The paper com- 

 menced by pointing out, with reference to the power 

 of communication with one another said to be pos- 

 sessed by Hymenoptera, that the observations on 

 record scarcely justify the conclusions which have 

 been drawn from them. In support of the opinion 

 that ants, bees, and wasps possess a true language, 

 it is usually stated that if one bee discovers a store 

 of honey, the others are soon aware of the fact. 

 This, however, does not necessarily imply the pos- 

 session of any power of describing localities, or any- 

 thing which could correctly be called a language. 

 If the bees or wasps merely follow their fortunate 

 companions, the matter is simple enough. If, on 

 the contrary, the others are sent, the case will be 

 very different. In order to test this, Sir John kept 

 honey in a given place for some time, in order to 

 satisfy himself that it would not readily be found by 

 the bees, and then brought a bee to the honey, mark- 

 ing it so that he could ascertain whether it brought 

 others or sent them, the latter, of course, implying 

 a much higher order of intelligence and power of 

 communication. After trying the experiment several 

 times with single bees and obtaining only negative 

 results. Sir John Lubbock procured one of Mar- 

 riott's observatory-hives, which he placed in his 

 sitting-room. The bees had free access to the open 

 air ; but there was also a small side or postern door 

 which could be opened at pleasure, and which led 

 into the room. This enabled him to feed and mark 

 any particular bees ; and he recounted a number of 

 experiments, from which it appeared that compara- 

 tively few bees found their own way through the 

 postern, while of those which did so the great ma- 

 jority flew to the window, and scarcely any found the 

 honey for themselves. Those, on the contrary, which 

 were taken to the honey, passed backwards and 

 forwards between it and the hive, making on an 

 average, five journeys in the hour. Sir John had 

 also, in a similar manner, watched a number of 

 marked wasps, with very similar results. These and 

 other observations of the same tendency appear to 

 show that, even if bees and wasps have the power 

 of informing one another when they discover a 

 store of good food, at anv rate they do not habitually 



do so ; and this seemed to him a strong reason for 

 concluding that they are not in the habit of com- 

 municating facts. "When once wasps had made 

 themselves thoroughly acquainted with their way, 

 their movements were most regular. They spent three 

 minutes supplying themselves with honey, and then 

 flew straight to the nest, returning after an interval 

 of about ten minutes, and thus making, like the 

 bees, about five journeys an hour. During Septem- 

 ber they began in the morning at about six o'clock, 

 and later when the mornings began to get cold, and 

 continued to work without intermission till dusk. 

 They made, therefore, rather more than fifty journeys 

 in the day. Sir John had also made some experi- 

 ments on the behaviour of bees introduced into 

 strange hives, which seemed to contradict the ordi- 

 nary statement that strange bees are always recog- 

 nized and attacked. Another point as to which 

 very different opinions have been propounded is the 

 use of the antenna. Some entomologists have 

 regarded them as olfactory organs, some as ears, the 

 weight of authority being perhaps in favour of the 

 latter opinion. In experimenting on his wasps 

 and bees, Sir John, to his surprise, could obtain no 

 evidence that they heard at all. He tried thenj 

 with a shrill pipe, with a whistle, with a violin, with 

 all the sounds of which his voice was capable, doing 

 so, moreover, within a few inches of their head ; but 

 they continued to feed without the slightest appear- 

 ance of consciousness. Lastly, he recounted some 

 observations showing that bees have the power 

 of distinguishing colours. The relations of insects 

 to flowers imply that the former can distinguish 

 colour ; but there had been as yet but few direct 

 observations on the point. 



British Spideks.— At a recent meeting of the 

 Linuean Society, the Rev. 0. P. Cambridge gave a 

 systematic list of these insects. He said that duriuS 

 the last five years a constant communication and 

 interchange of typical examples of spiders has been 

 going onbetween|Dr.T.Thorell, of Upsala, Dr. Koch> 

 of Niirnberg, M. Eugene Simon, of Paris, and him- 

 self, and others, with a view to the determination 

 of the synonymic identity of the species recorded 

 as indigenous to Europe, but principally to Sweden, 

 France, Germany, and England. The result of this 

 investigation have been published by Dr. ThorcU in 

 a most exhaustive work lately completed, "On the 

 Synonyms of European Spiders." The effect of this 

 work is to give priority to names of many British 

 spiders described by Mr. Blackwall and the w\-iter 

 other than the names they bear in the works of 

 those authors. The time therefore appears to have 

 arrived when a list, complete to the present time, of 

 the known spiders of Great Britain and Ireland 

 under the names to which, according to the laws of 

 priority, they appear to be entitled, seems to be a 

 desideratum. Dr. Thorell gives a list of British 



