INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 527 



is guided to his house from his memory of its position 

 relative to other buildings or objects, Avithout its being 

 necessary for him even to cast a look at it. If, after 

 quitting my house in a morning, it were to be lifted 

 out of its site in the street by enchantment, and re- 

 placed by another with a similar entrance, I should 

 probably, even in the day time, enter it, without being 

 struck by the change ; and bees, if during their absence 

 their old hive be taken away and a similar one set in 

 its place, enter this last, and if it be provided with 

 brood comb contentedly take up their abode in it, never 

 troubling themselves to inquire what has become of 

 the identical habitation which they left in the morning, 

 and with the inhabitants of which, if it be removed 

 to fifty paces distance, they never resume their con- 

 nexion^. 



If, pursuing my illustration, you should object that 

 no man would thus contentedly sit down in a new 

 house without searching after the old one, you must 

 bear in mind that I am not aiming to show that bees 

 have as precise a memory as ours, but only that they 

 are endowed with some portion of this faculty, which I 

 think the above fact proves. Should you view it in a 

 different light, you will not deny the force of others 

 that have already been stated in the course of our cor- 

 respondence ; such as the mutual greetings of ants of 

 the same society when brought together after a separa- 

 tion of four months'* ; and the return of a party of bees 



the neighbouring objects. The queen docs the same thing n lien flying 

 into the air for fecundation. Huber, Recherches sur les Fourmis, 100. 



" See the account of the mode in which the Favignanais increase the 

 uumber of their hives by tiius dividing tliein. Ifqljer, ii. 159, 



" See above, p. C6, 



