THE ORGANIC TENDENCY 187 



concede them any but the most rudimentary free- 

 dom of mental activity. I place a new hive at the 

 end of a row, and many of the bees returning from 

 the field to the neighboring colony are lost. They 

 have been returning to the hive at the end of the 

 row; they continue to do so, but it is no longer 

 home and the reorientation is a diflScult task. 

 Some bumble-bees nested under a pile of scrap 

 lumber beneath my porch, entering always at one 

 corner of the pile. I removed a few tools which 

 were leaning against the lumber and for hours 

 bewildered bumble-bees searched for the entrance 

 to their nest, which was actually clearer than be- 

 fore. But in the end the repeated trials of these 

 wonderful little creatures resulted in the recognition 

 of new landmarks and the changed conditions be- 

 came familiar. 



Major Kingston has recently given us an unsur- 

 passed collection of data bearing on the mental 

 processes of insects.^ He relates many fascinating 

 instances of instinctive action more fixed than 

 that of the bees, of instincts which operate so 

 rigidly that the slightest departure from natural 

 conditions, a departure demanding no more than 

 a trifling modification of the accustomed behavior 

 or even the repetition of a familiar act out of its 

 usual order, may result fatally for the animal or 

 its young. In other cases he records a marked 



^ Hingston, R. W. G., Instinct and Intelligence, 1929. 



