COLOURS OF FLOWERS AS AN ATTRACTION TO BEES. 288 



when she flew to another slip. This then I took away, when she 

 went to a third ; and so on. In this way I induced her to visit 

 all the drops successively. When she had returned to the nest, 

 I transposed all the upper glasses with the honey, and also 

 moved the coloured glasses. Thus, as the drop of honey was 

 changed each time, and also the position of the glasses, neither of 

 these could influence the selection by the bee. 



In recording the results I marked down successively the order 

 in which the bee went to the different coloured glasses. For 

 instance, in the first journey from the nest, as recorded below, 

 the bee lit first on the blue, which accordingly I marked 1 ; when 

 disturbed from the blue, she flew about a little and then lit on 

 the white ; when the white was removed, she settled on the 

 green ; and so on successively on the orange, yellow, plain, and 

 red. I repeated the experiment a hundred times, using two 

 difi'erent hives, and spreading the observations over some time, 

 so as to experiment with difi'erent bees and under varied circum- 

 stances. Adding the numbers together, it of course follows that 

 the preference shown for each colour is inversely as the number 

 standing against it. If we add together 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, 

 we get 28 as the total for each journey, and dividing this again 

 by 7, if no preference were shown, the number for each colour 

 would be 400. 



I now subjoin the numbers, giving the first day in extenso : — 



Plain 



26 39 65 51 55 35 37 



In the next series of experiments the bees had been trained 

 for three weeks to come to a particular spot on a large lawn, by 



