364 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



Dr. Whcwell communicated some observations from Mr. Ellis, " On the 

 Cause of the Instinctive Tendency of Bees to form Hexagonal Cells." He 

 supposed that the bee was led to the exercise of this instinct by the use of 

 their organs of sight. It was well known that, in addition to their facetted 

 eyes, they had three single eyes; and he supposed that these eyes were 

 placed in such a position as to enable them to work within such a range as 

 to give the walls of their cells an angle of 120 degrees. 



Mr. J. Lubbock gave an account of the experiments by Mr. Darwin, in 

 which he had found that bees made circular cells in the circumference 

 of their combs, but that these were always worked again into an hexagonal 

 form when another row was placed beyond them. That the material of the 

 circular cell was removed for this purpose, he had ascertained by painting 

 the outside of the external row of cells with carmine, indigo, and other sub- 

 stances, which were invariably worked up into the next row of cells. In 

 answer to Mr. Ellis's theory of the eyes, he could state from observation 

 that bees, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, worked in the dark. Wasps 

 made hexagonal cells from the beginning. He believed the tendency of 

 bees to make hexagonal cells was acquired, and that originally bees made 

 circular cells, but from a deficiency of material had at last acquired the 

 habit of making hexagonal cells. 



Mr. Bayldon stated that he kept a large number of bees, and that he had 

 seen them make hexagonal cells at first. The outer cells alone were circu- 

 lar. Dr. Lankester said it was an interesting physiological question as 

 to whether the eye or some other organ was the first recipient of the im- 

 pression which induced the movements that resulted in the bees' work. An 

 impression must be made on some organ of the animal, as all the actions of 

 the lower animals were excito-motory, and probably the antennae were the 

 organs acted on. Dr. Edwards suggested that the materials with which 

 the bee worked were sufficiently receptive of light to act upon their organs 

 of vision, and thus the eye might be still the excitor of the instinctive ac- 

 tions. 



PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEWS OF THE MOTIONS OF ANIMALS. 



The following paper, on the above subject, has been published in the pro- 

 ceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, by Dr. David Weinland : 

 There is hardly any part of the science of natural history which has been so 

 little studied as the psychology of animals. The ability to descend to the 

 level of the mental constitution (fyvxv) of animals, to understand their 

 feelings, thoughts, and desires, seems to have diminished in proportion to the 

 progress of civilization; or at least, in proportion as cultivated minds of civ- 

 ilized nations have secluded themselves from free nature in cities and stu- 

 dents' closets. Still, w.e think the psychology of animals is by no means the 

 least interesting subject of human thought. It is acknowledged that man is 

 the crowning work of creation, and this has been proved and illustrated 

 often enough by comparison of the structure of his body with that of other 

 vertebrates; by showing that there exists an ideal series of development 

 from the horizontally moving fish to the erect man. Xow, may not this truth 

 be as clearly, or more clearly traced, in following out the degrees of devel- 

 opment of the psychical element, from the low, feeding, and propagating fish, 

 to man as made in the image of God that is, thinking in the same catego- 

 ries with him. Undoubtedly such a series of psychical development exists, 



