Hilgendorf. — Sense of Direction in Bees. 485 



However, notwithstanding my conviction that there was 

 no sense of direction in bees, Dr. Farr's theory seemed well 

 worth testing, and I tested it by the following experiments : — 



1. I saw that in some cases it would be necessary to work 

 with drones instead of with workers, owing to the difficulty 

 of handling the latter. So I first proved that drones would 

 come home rapidly and unfailingly from any distance that 

 I was likely to experiment from. I took ten drones and 

 rolled them in flour, and carried them away from the hive 

 to the distance of one-third of a mile. All returned within 

 five minutes. 



2. I tried the same experiment with workers, but it failed 

 entirely. The workers settled on the grass or a tree and 

 cleaned themselves of the flour before they came home ; 

 many also, since they were out, stayed out for their load of 

 honey or pollen, and so by the time of their return were 

 unrecognisable. 



After various other attempts to secure an easy way of 

 watching the bees come home I was forced to adopt the 

 arrangement that Romanes made in his experiments and 

 have the experimental hive indoors. My first attempt to test 

 the magnetic suggestion was to put the bees in a box of soft 

 iron, of sufficient thickness of wall and of sufficiently con- 

 tracted content to screen off all the earth's magnetism from 

 the bees inside the box. This proved exceedingly incon- 

 venient, and I then determined to use a powerful bar mag- 

 net, which would so distort the lines of force due to the 

 earth's magnetism as to render them inappreciable to the 

 bees carried close to the magnet. 



(a.) I took twenty-seven bees from the hive and carried 

 them 100 yards away round to the back of the building. 

 Nine bees had returned within two minutes, twenty-four 

 within fifteen minutes, twenty-six within forty-five minutes; 

 and one did not return, and was probably injured during 

 capture or transit. Those that came back between two and 

 fifteen minutes from liberation were usually laden with 

 pollen, having seized the opportunity for commencing work. 



(b.) I took twenty-six bees to the same place, carrying 

 them on their outward journey in a test-tube lying on a bar 

 magnet with the north pole held pointing south. Twenty- 

 two bees had returned within fifteen minutes, and the 

 twenty-six within thirty minutes. 



(c.) I took twenty-eight bees to the same place in the same 

 manner, but this time the north pole, on which they were 

 held, was rotated horizontally, so as to point to all points 

 of the compass many times during the journey. Twenty- 

 one bees had returned within three minutes, and the twenty- 

 eight within fifteen minutes. 





