586 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



in the midst of villages surrounded and interspersed with trees and build- 

 ings, so as to make it impossible that they can be seen from a distance. 

 If you had been with me in 1815, in the famous Pays de Waes in Flan- 

 ders, where the country is a perfect flat, and the inhabitants so enamored 

 either of the beauty or profit of trees that their fields, which are rarely 

 above three acres in extent, are constantly surrounded with a double row, 

 making the whole district one vast wood, you would have pitied the poor 

 bees if reduced to depend on their own eyesight for retracing the road 

 homeward. In vain, during my stay at St. Nicholas, I sallied out at every 

 outlet to try to gain some idea of the extent and form of the town. Trees 

 — trees — trees — still met me, and intercepted the view in every direction ; 

 and I defy any inhabitant bee of this rural metropolis, after once quitting 

 its hive, ever to gain a glimpse of it again until nearly perpendicularly 

 over it. The bees, therefore, of the Pays de Waes, and consequently all 

 other bees, must be led to their abodes by instinct, as certainly as it is 

 instinct that directs the migrations of birds or of fishes, or domestic quad- 

 rupeds to find out their homes from inconceivable distances.^ When ihey 

 have reached the hive, another instinct leads them to regurgitate into 

 the extended proboscis of their hungry companions who have been occu- 

 pied at home a portion of the honey collected in the fields ; and another 

 directs them to unload their legs of the masses of pollen, and to store it in 

 the cells for future use. 



Several distinct instincts, again, are called into action in the important 

 business of feeding the young brood. One teaches them to swallow 

 pollen, not to satisfy the calls of hunger, but that it may undergo in their 

 stomach on elaboration fitting It for the food of the grubs ; and another to 

 regurgitate it when duly concocted, and to administer it to their charge, 

 proportioning the supply to the age and condition of the recipients. A 

 third informs them when the young grubs have attained their full growth, 

 and directs them to cover their cells with a waxen lid, convex in the male 

 cells, but nearly flat in those of workers ; and by a fourth, as soon as the 

 young bees have burst into day, they are impelled to clean out the deserted 

 tenements and to make them ready for new occupants. 



Numerous as are the instincts I have already enumerated, the list must 

 yet include those connected, with that mysterious principle which binds 



• The following striking anecdote of tiiis last species of instinct, in an animal not famed 

 for sagacity, was related to me by Lieutenant (now Lieut. -Colonel) Alderson (Royal Engi- 

 neers), who was personally acquainted with ihe facts. — In March, 1816, an ass, the property 

 of Captain Dundas, R. N., then at Malta, was shipped on board the Ister frigate. Captain 

 Forrest, bound from Gibraltar for that island. The vessel having struck on some sands off 

 the Point de Gat, at some distance from the shore, the ass was thrown overboard to give it 

 a chance of swimming to land — a poor one, for the sea was running so high that a boat 

 •which left the ship was lost. A few days afterwards, however, when the gates of Gibraltar 

 ■were opened in the morning, the ass presented himself for admittance, and proceeded to 

 the stable of Mr. Week's, a merchant, which he had formerly occupied, to the no small 

 surprise of this gentleman, who imagined that from some accident the animal had never 

 been shipped on board the Ister. On the return of this vessel to repair, the mystery was 

 explained ; and it turned out that Valiante (so the ass was called) had not only swam safely 

 to shore, but, without guide, compass, or traveling map, had found his way from Point de 

 Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles, which he had never traversed 

 before, through a mountainous and intricate country, intersected by streams, and in so 

 short a period that he could not have made one false turn. His not having been slopped 

 on the road was attributed to the circumstance of his having been formerly used to whip 

 criminals upon, which was indicated to the peasants, who have a superstitious horror of 

 such asses, by the holes in his ears, to which the persons flogged were tied. 



