484 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



blindly came back to the same place. On the other hand, 

 if during the night a hive is moved to a distance much greater 

 than that I have mentioned — say, 50 yards — the bees in the 

 morning will start work quite freely ; none will go back to 

 the old site, but all will find their way back to their new 

 position. This also looks as if these insects had a sense of 

 direction, and came back to the point from which they set 

 out on any particular journey. 



On another occasion I had reason to bring a hive into 

 my laboratory to have them under close observation. There 

 are four similar windows close together, but of these the 

 bottom sash of only one opens. I opened that for the bees 

 to come in and out by, left the other three closed, and put 

 the hive with its door facing the open window. Many of the 

 bees on leaving the hive struck the closed windows, stayed 

 on the glass for a time, and I never saw one in such circum- 

 stances leave the glass and drop down to the hive, 2 ft. away, 

 or go round to the open window, 12 in. away. They all — to 

 the number of hundreds — stayed on the glass till they fell 

 dead or dying on to the sill. After the first day I blocked the 

 other windows, and left them so for a fortnight, by the end 

 of which time the bees were thoroughly used to their new 

 quarters, and were working and breeding vigorously. It is 

 fair to presume that by now practically all the bees in the 

 hive were familiar with the open window, and the way in and 

 out. I raised the blinds, and again all those that struck the 

 glass stayed there and died, though they surely knew of the 

 open window just beside them. In this case, too, it hardly 

 seemed that the bees could see for any distance sufficient to 

 warrant the supposition that they found their way about by 

 sight, or they surely would have flown back to their hives. 



Such are the facts and considerations that induced me to 

 undertake the experiments I am about to record. At the 

 same time, I may state that I did not believe in a sense of 

 direction. On one occasion I moved a hive 50 yards during 

 the night, and shut it up till I was at liberty to deal with it in 

 the morning. I then took oat fifty bees and marked them, 

 carried them 200 yards across the garden and liberated 

 them. They all went back to the place where the hive had 

 been on the previous night. This in itself disproved the 

 idea of a sense of direction, and proved that the bees found 

 their way by sight ; and numerous other experiments, and 

 chiefly those by Romanes, clearly prove the same facts. 

 The apparent want of sight argued in my other experiences 

 is easily explained by the consideration that the actions of 

 bees are prompted not by reason, but by instinct, which I 

 think in no other case is so well characterized by its true 

 epithet of "blind instinct." 



