INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 4-95 



to think it is occasioned by a yellow matter which the 

 bees seem to detach from their mandibles, and to apply 

 to the surface which they are varnishing, by repeated 

 strokes of these organs and of the fore feet *. 



In their out-of-door operations several distinct instincts 

 are concerned. By one they are led to extract honey 

 from the nectaries of flowers ; by another to collect pol- 

 len after a process involving very complicated manipu- 

 lations, and requiring a singular apparatus of brushes 

 and baskets ; and that must surely be considered a third, 

 which so remarkably and beneficially restricts each ga- 

 thering to the same plant ''. It is clearly a distinct in- 

 stinct which inspires bees with such dread of rain, that 

 even if a cloud pass before the sun, they return to the 

 hive in the greatest haste ^ ; and that seems to me not less 

 so, which teaches them to find their way back to their 

 home after the most distant and intricate wanderings. 

 When bees have found the direction in which their hive 

 lies, Huber says they fly to it with an extreme rapidity, 

 and as straight as a ball from a musket '' : and if their 

 hives were always in open situations, one might suppose, 

 as Huber seems inclined to think, that it is by their sight 

 they are conducted to them. But hives are frequently 

 found in small gardens embowered in wood, and in the 

 midst of villages surrounded and interspersed with trees 

 and buildings, 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 Flanders — where 

 the country is a perfect flat, and the inhabitants so en- 

 amoured either of the beauty or profit of trees, that their 



'■* Huber, ii, 275—. " See above, p. 179. 



■• Huber, i. 356. '^ Ibid. ii. 367. 



