!?0' INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



convenience. Dr. Rousseau comes to the conclusion 

 that without smell we could have no taste ; and he 

 proved his opinion by successively blind-foldino; some 

 young- physicians, who were sceptical respecting- it, and 

 closing their nostrils made them guess onions to be 

 apples, and camphor to be bread*. This doctrine 

 appears not a little plausible, but it will only hold in 

 case o^ Jlavours, that is, when odour accompanies 

 taste, the two sensations being as distinct as their 

 causes, — a distinction first pointed out, we believe, 

 by Dr. Prout t- 



The varied effects of different odours on bees were 

 experimentally ascertained by the elder Iluber in 

 numerous instances. He found that the mineral 

 acids and volatile alkali acted still more powerfully 

 than spirit of turpentine. " On our presentinj^ 

 musk," he says, " to bees feeding before the entrance 

 of their hive, they ceased, and partially dispersed, but 

 without precipitation or beating their wings. We 

 sprinkled some powdered musk on a drop of honey, 

 into which some bees thrust their suckers as if by 

 stealth, for they kept as far back from it as possible; 

 but although they often appeared to suck it, we did 

 not perceive it to become less in a quarter of an 

 hour, long before which it would have disappeared 

 had it not been mixed with musk. Pounded assa- 

 foetida, whose odour is so disagreeable to us, upon 

 being mixed with honey and put at the entrance of a 

 hive, did not seem to annoy the bees ; ibr they 

 greedily sucked all the honey, neitlier attempting to 

 withdraw, nor vibrating their wings, till they only 

 left the particles of the gum. 



" Having had remarked, that bees going out to 

 the fields and coming home, turned aside in the air 

 to avoid passing immediately over a piece of cani- 



* Philadelphia Joiirn,, edit, by Dr. Chapman, No. /. 

 t London Med, and Fhys. Jouni. lor 1812. 



