60 Mr. Newport on the Honey Bee. 
first leaving the new hive, usually makes several circuits around 
it in the air, at greater and greater distances, with its head con- 
stantly directed towards the hive, as if to reconnoitre the spot 
prior to its taking a distant flight. 
These considerations lead me to the conclusion that it is chiefly 
by means of vision that bees and other insects find their way 
back to their homes. 
P.S.—Since this paper was read to the Society it has been 
referred to the judgment of Dr. Bevan, the most accurate and 
philosophic of our practical English apiarians; and it gives me 
great pleasure to learn that the views which it contains are in 
entire accordance with those entertained by that distinguished 
naturalist. Dr. Bevan states, that most of the facts now adduced 
in support of the opinion, that the bee depends upon its visual 
organs to guide its unerring flight, he can confirm by repeated 
observations of his own; and he adds that, in conformity with 
this opinion, “ it is my practice, if any occasion occur to induce 
me, to change the site of a family of bees in my garden, or to any 
other place within the usual range of their flight, to prevent their 
egress for a time, longer or shorter, according to the season. 
This has the effect of rendering them circumspect, and makes 
them look about them prior to their taking flight from their new 
locality. Acting also on the same opinion, I am in the habit of 
marking all the entrances to my bee-boxes with different colours, 
to secure their occupants against committing mistakes, though I 
have some doubt as to the necessity of this measure.”—(Dr. 
Bevan in lit.) 
To these observations I may add some further remarks. It 
is by the sense of vision that the drone of the hive discovers 
his royal partner in the air, during his short excursive flights ; 
and celebrates there his connubial duties, as believed by Huber ; * 
* T have no doubt that this opinion of Huber’s is correct. I once found, about 
noon, on a very fine calm day, in the beginning of May, a drone hive bee, which 
I saw fall to the ground enfeebled and mutilated in the particular way described 
by Huber. This happened at a distance of from two to three hundred yards from 
some cottages where bees were kept. Every one also must have noticed the 
pairing of butterflies in the air. This is the constant habit of the diurnal Lepi- 
doptera, and I have teason to believe that these species will not pair in confine- 
ment. During the past summer I have reared more than one hundred specimens 
of Vanessa urtice, and also nearly as many of Vanessa Io; and although the 
sexes of each were confined together in the same breeding cage, and the bodies 
of the females became fully distended by the development of the ova, not a single 
act of connubial intercourse took place, but the whole died, both males and females, 
at the end of a few weeks, the females without depositing even a single egg. 
