283 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



ON THE COLOURS OF FLOWERS AS AN ATTRACTION 



TO BEES. 



By Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., Pres. Linu. Soc. 



(Abstract of a Paper read before the Linnean Society, November I7tli, 1881.) 



After some prefatory remarks, and criticisms of an experi- 

 ment by M. Bonnier, Sir John Lubbock said : — 



" I do not think, however, that any satisfactory result could be 

 expected from this experiment. In the first place, after the first 

 five minutes there were about thirty bees on each cube, and in 

 less than ten minutes nearly a hundred, and the colour therefore 

 must have been almost covered up. The presence of so many 

 bees would also attract their companions. Moreover, as the 

 honey was all removed in less than twenty minutes, the bees were 

 evidently working against time. They were like the passengers in 

 an express train, turned hurriedly into a refreshment room ; and 

 we cannot expect that they would be much influenced by the 

 colouring of the table. In fact, the experiment was too hurried 

 and the test not delicate enough. 



Then, again, he omitted blue, which I hope to show is the 

 bees' favourite colour, and his cubes were all coloured. It is true 

 that one was green; bat any one may satisfy himself that a piece 

 of green paper on grass is almost as conspicuous as any other 

 colour. To make his experiment complete, M. Bonnier should 

 have placed beside the honey on the coloured cubes a similar 

 supply without any accompaniment of colour to render it con- 

 spicuous. 



I could not, therefore, regard these experiments as at all 

 conclusive. The following experiments seem to me a more fair 

 test : — 



I took slips of glass of the size generally used for slides for 

 the microscope, viz. 3 inches by 1, and pasted on them slips of 

 paper coloured respectively blue, green, orange, red, white, and 

 yellow. I then put them on a lawn, in a row, about a foot ajjart, 

 and on each put a second slip of glass, with a drop of hone}^ 

 I also put with them a plain slip of glass, with a similar drop of 

 honey. I had previousl}^ trained a marked bee to come to the 

 spot for honey. My plan then was, when the bee returned and 

 had sipped about for a quarter of a minute, to remove tlie honey. 



