24)6 INSECTS. 



sometimes act in a remarkably reasonable manner. 

 Thus, some bees transported to Peru (" Zool." 7574), 

 and providing a plentiful supply of honey in the first 

 season, gradually slackened in their labour, diminishing 

 the quantity stored up, until they nearly ceased to collect 

 at all. Were the Bees indeed possessed of reason, this 

 might be explained by their finding that flowers were to 

 be had all the year round, and judging from thence 

 that the labour of collecting stores of honey was 

 superfluous. 



In the same periodical from which this incident is 

 borrowed, there is an account of a huge colony of Hive 

 Bees which had taken up their abode in a blank attic- 

 window of an old house in Yorkshire. A swarm of 

 Bees had settled in the casement, and had been left 

 undisturbed for some years, during which time swarm 

 after swarm had yearly been thrown off and had settled 

 in the same old mullioned window, and, when taken, the 

 nest consisted of tier above tier of combs, several feet 

 in height, and weighing, with the honey, 160 pounds. 

 Here the common habit of the removal of the young 

 swarms was not followed, there being accommodation 

 for them near their old homes. 



If the foregoing stories go to prove that the " in- 

 stinct" of the Bee includes the power of comparing facts 

 and drawing conclusions from them, the following anec- 

 dote (from Ireland) gives an example of this same " in- 

 stinct," exercised in the form of memory and resentment. 



" Some Beehives were placed on a stand of two deal 

 planks, not fitting closely together. After a time, the 

 crevice between the planks increasing, the Bees began to 

 use it as a passage, and at last commenced building 

 combs beneath the stand. The gardener, disapproving 



