THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 163 



not communicate with their sisters, even if they find an 

 untenanted comb full of honey;" that, far from exhibiting 

 "any evidence of affection, they appear to be callous and 

 utterly indifferent to one another;" that even "their devotion 

 to their queen is of a most limited character;" and that 

 their perception of differences of colour is incontestible, — a 

 deduction equally applicable to wasps. Some experiments 

 were also n)ade " with the view of ascertaining whether the 

 same bees act as sentinels." Having found that particular 

 scents had the effect of calling the bees out, he marked 

 twelve, in all, of those which first appeared on several 

 successive days; and, in nine such experiments, "out of 

 ninety-seven bees « hich came out first, no less than seventy- 

 one were marked ones." He likewise tested some of the 

 faculties attributed to ants, and especially their "power of 

 communicating facts to one another," which his first recited 

 experiments served to corroborate ; although " some appeared 

 to communicate more freely with their friends than others," 

 which did not summon their companions to assist them. By 

 a further series of "Observations" on these races, more 

 recently read before the Linnean Society, and communicated 

 by the author to ' Nature' (No. 315, November Uth), we are 

 also informed that one ant made no less than one hundred 

 and eighty-seven journeys in a day to carry off' larviE one by 

 one, without bringing any other ant to assist her; but, in 

 other instances, a different result was witnessed, the ants 

 which had the heaviest task to perform having "brought far 

 more friends to their assistance than those which had 

 apparently only two or three larvae to remove;" these latter 

 being replaced by others from time to time as each was 

 carried off". Thus, " of thirty ants which were observed, 

 those placed to a large number of larvae brought two hundred 

 and fifty friends, while those ])laced to two or three larvae 

 tmder similar circumstances only brought eighty." We also 

 find that ants prefer a beaten track, however circuitous, to 

 hazarding a short cut by dropping even " one-tenth of an 

 inch ;" but had retreat been cut off' altogether, their ingenuity 

 to devise some other mode of escape might have been more 

 sorely tested. In these and other experiments upon the 

 aforesaid social tribes, the most striking evidence is afforded 

 of the indefatigable industry with which such observations 



