Hudson. — On the Senses of Insects. 29 



any desired number of bees to escape. When the desired 

 number had escaped the glass shutter was again closed, and 

 all the liberated bees were caught as they buzzed about the 

 inside of the shut window. These bees were then counted 

 into a box, the window of the room opened, and a card well 

 smeared over with birdlime placed upon the threshold of the 

 beehive, or just in front of the closed glass shutter. The ob- 

 ject of all these arrangements was to obviate the necessity of 

 marking the bees, and so to enable me not merely to experi- 

 ment with ease upon any number of individuals that I might 

 desire, but also to feel confident that no one individual could 

 return to the hive unnoticed ; for whenever a bee returned 

 it was certain to become entangled in the birdlime, and when- 

 ever I found a bee so entangled I was certain it was one I 

 had taken from the hive, as there were no other hives in the 

 neighbourhood. Such being the method, I began by taking 

 a score of bees in the box out to sea, where there could be no 

 laud-marks to guide the insects home. Had any of these 

 insects returned, I should next have taken another score out 

 to sea (after an interval of several days so as to be sure that 

 the first lot had become permanently lost), and then before 

 liberating them have rotated the box in a sling for a con- 

 siderable time, in order to see whether this would have con- 

 fused their sense of direction. But as none of the bees 

 returned after the first experiment it was clearly needless to 

 proceed to the second. Accordingly I liberated the next lot 

 of bees on the sea-shore ; and as none of these returned I 

 liberated another lot on the lawn between the shore and the 

 house. I was somewhat surprised to find that neither did 

 any of these return, although the distance from the lawn to 

 the hive was not above 200 yards. Lastly, I liberated bees in 

 different parts of the flower-garden, and these I always found 

 stuck upon the birdlime within a few minutes of their libera- 

 tion ; indeed, they often arrived before I had had time to run 

 from the place where I had liberated them to the hive. Now, 

 as the garden was a large one, many of these bees had to fly 

 a greater distance in order to reach the hive than was the 

 case with their lost sisters upon the lawn, and therefore I 

 could have no doubt that their uniform success in finding 

 their way home so immediately was due to their special 

 knowledge of the flower-garden, and not to any general sense 

 of direction. I may add that, while in Germany a few 

 weeks ago, I tried on several species of ant the same experi- 

 ments as Sir John Lubbock describes in his paper as having 

 been tried by him upon English species, and here also I 

 obtained identical results — in ail cases the ants were hope- 

 lessly lost if liberated more than a moderate distance from 

 their nest." Mr. Eomanes's experiments, therefore, as he 



