596 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



toad, fixed it to the top of a piece of wood which he stuck into the 

 ground. But, a short lime afterwards, he found that a body of these 

 indefatigable Httle sextons had circumvented him in spite of his precau- 

 tions. Not being able to reach the toad, they had undermined the base 

 of the stick until it fell, and then buried both stick and load.^ 



In the second place, insects gain knowledge from experience, which 

 would be impossible if they were not gifted with some portion of reason. 

 In proof of their thus profiting, I shall select from the numerous facts 

 that might be brought forward four only, one of which has been already 

 slightly adverted to. 



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

 Transactions^, states that he has seen large humble-bees, when unable 

 from the size of their head and thorax to reach to 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 abstract the honey. They 

 thus flew from flower to flower, piercing the tubes from without, and suck- 

 ing the nectar; while smaller humble-bees, or those with a longer probos- 

 cis, 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 ascertained by experience that the 

 flowers of beans are too strait to admit them, they then, without further 

 attempts in the ordinary way, pierced the bottoms of aZZ the flowers which 

 they wished to rifle of their sweets. M. Aubert du Petit-Thouars observed 

 that humble-bees and the carpenter-bee (Xylocojja^ violacea) gained access 

 in a similar manner to the nectar of Antirrhinum linaria and majus and 

 Mirahilis jalappa, as do the common bees of the Isle of France to that 

 of Canna Indica'^ ; and I have myself more than once noticed holes at 

 the base of the long nectaries of Aquilegia vulgaris, which I attribute to 

 the same agency.^ 



A similar instance of knowledge gained by experience in the hive-bee 



' Gleditsch, Physic. Bot. CEcon. Abhandl. iii. 220. « P. 222. 



' Apis **. d. 2. /?. K. * Nouveau Bulletin des Sciences, i. 45. 



^ See an interesting article by Mr. C. Darwin in the Gardentr^s Chronicle, 1811, p. 550., 

 on the variations in the mode in which humble-bees pierce, as above described, the long- 

 tubed corollas of difierent labaited plants. In Sfachijs coccinea, Mirahilis jalappa, and Salvia 

 coccinea, each corolla had a hole on its upper side near the base ; whereas in Salvia Grahami, 

 which has a more elongated calyx, this part also was invariably pierced ; and in Penstemon 

 argatus the rather broader corolla had always two holes, in order to give the bees more ready 

 access to the nectar on both sides of the germen. All these holes are on the upper side of 

 the base of the corolla; but in the common Antirrhinum they are on the under side, so as to 

 be directly in front of the nectary. Town-educated humble-bees Mr. Darwin found always 

 draw off the nectar from these last-named flowers growing in the London Zoological Gar- 

 dens through these artificial orifices; while from two years' observation he is persuaded 

 that their rustic brethren are less clever, and invariably gain access to the nectar of snap- 

 dragons growing in the country by forcing open the elastic lower lip and creeping into the 

 flower. Possibly diff'erent species or sexes of humble-bees maybe here concerned; but 

 one instance, in which the same individual bee cut holes in the base of some flowers of 

 Rhododendron azaleoides and entered the mouth of others, seems as strong a proof of reason 

 as can well be imagined, as the proceedings of the little animal were evidently varied 

 according to the varying necessity of the case ; and if, as Mr. Darwin thinks he has ob- 

 served, the hive-bees frequenting these flowers by degrees came to discover and avail 

 themselves of the orifices made by the humble-bees, this fact, as he justly remarks, offers a 

 very striking proof of acquired knowledge in insects. 



