496 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



fields, which are rarely above three acres in extent, are 

 constantly surrounded with a double row, making the 

 whole district one vast wood you would have pitied the 

 poor bees if reduced to tiepend on their own eye-sight 

 for retracing the road homeward. In vain during my 

 stay at St. Nicholas I sallied out at every outlet to try 

 to gain some idea of the extent and form of the town. 

 Trees trees trees still met me, and intercepted the 

 view in every direction ; and I defy any inhabitant bee 

 of this rural metropolis, after once quitting its hive, 

 ever to gain a glimpse of it again until nearly perpendi- 

 cularly over it. The bees, therefore, of the Pays de 

 Waes, and consequently all other bees, must be led to 

 their abodes by instinct, as certainly as it is instinct that 

 directs the migrations of birds or of fishes, or domestic 

 quadrupeds to find out their homes from inconceivable 

 distances a . When they have reached the hive, another 

 instinct leads them to regurgitate into the extended pro- 

 boscis of their hungry companions who have been occu- 

 pied at home, a portion of the honey collected in the 

 fields ; and another directs them to unload their legs of 

 the masses of pollen, and to store it in the cells for future 

 use. 



a The following striking anecdote of this last species of instinct in 

 an animal not famed for sagacity, was related to me by Lieutenant 

 Alderson, (royal engineers,) who was personally acquainted with the 

 facts. In March 1816 an ass, the property of Captain Dundas,R.N., 

 then at Malta, was shipped on board the Ister frigate, Captain For- 

 rest, bound from Gibraltar for that island. The vessel having struck 

 on some sands off the Point de Gat, at some distance from the shore, 

 the ass was thrown overboard to give it a chance of swimming to 

 land a poor one, for the sea was running so high that a boat which 

 left the ship was lost. A few days afterwards, however, when the 

 gates of Gibraltar were opened in the morning, the ass presented 

 himself for admittance, and proceeded to the stable of Mr. Weeks, 



