366 HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packard. 



individual experience. As with tlie same experience some 

 bees liave acquired tlie habit and otliers liave not, we must 

 admit not only that these insects are intelligent, but that 

 they differ from each other in their degrees of intelligence; 

 some being slow in acquiring knowledge, others quiclver. 

 The scarlet runner, when the bloom is covered with gauze to 

 keep off* insects, is wholly sterile ; and so indeed habitually 

 are a good many of the uncovered blossoms. The latter is 

 probably owing to the observed fact that most bees have 

 learned to get at the nectary by nipping the tube. Were all 

 bees equally clever there would be an end of scarlet runners, 

 unless, indeed, either nature or artifice were to induce some 

 modification of structure by which the tube might be pro- 

 tected and the bees again driven to the mouth." 



The following instances are taken from Kiiby and Spence, 

 and are, we believe, the earliest cases of this habit on record. 



"M. P. Huber, in his valuable paper in the sixth volume 

 of the Linnean Transactions, states that he has seen large 

 humble bees, when unable from the size of their head and 

 thorax to reach the bottom of the long tubes of the flowers 

 of beans, go directly to the calyx, pierce it as well as the 

 tube with the exterior horny parts of their proboscis, and 

 then insert their proboscis itself into the orifice and extract 

 the honey. They thus flew from flower to flower, piercing 

 the tubes from without, and sucking the nectar, while smaller 

 humble bees or those with a longer proboscis entered in at 

 the top of the corolla. Now from this statement it seems 

 evident that the larger bees did not pierce the bottoms of 

 the flowers until they had ascertained by trial that they could 

 not reach the nectar from the top ; but that having once as- 

 certained by experience that the flowers of beans are too 

 straight to admit them, they then, without further attempts 

 in the ordinary way, pierced the bottoms of all the flowers 

 which they wished to rifle of their sweets. M. Aubert du 

 Petit-Thouars observed that humble bees and the carpenter- 



14 



