INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 517 



certained 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 all the 

 flowers which they wished to rifle of their sweets. — 

 M. Aubert du Petit- Thouars observed that humble-bees 

 and the carpenter-bee [Xylocopa^ violacca) gained access 

 in a similar manner to the nectar of Antirrhimim Linaria 

 and mqjtts, 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 at- 

 tribute to the same agency. 



My second fact is supplied by the same ants, whose 

 sagacious choice of the vicinity of Reaumur's glass hives 

 for their colony has been just i-elated to you. He tells 

 us that of these ants, of which there were such swarms 

 on the outside of the hive, not a single one was ever per- 

 ceived within ; and infers that, as they are such lovers of 

 honey, and there was no difficulty in finding crevices to 

 enter in at, they were kept without, solely from fear of 

 the consequences'^. Whence arose this fear? We have 

 no ground for supposing ants endowed with any instinc- 

 tive dread of bees ; and Reaumur tells us, that when he 

 happened to leave in his garden, hives of which the bees 

 had died, the ants then never failed to enter them and 

 regale themselves with the honey. It seems reasonable, 

 therefore, to attribute it to experience. Some of the ants 

 no doubt had tried to enter the peopled as they did the 

 empty hive, but had been punished for their presumption, 



' Apis * *. d. 2./3. K. '' Kouiwau Btillctin dex Sciences, i. 45, 



' Reaum. v. 709. 



