INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 521 



buildings or objects, without its being necessary for him 

 even to cast a look at it. If, after quitting my house in 

 a morning, it were to be lifted out of its site in the street 

 by enchantment, and replaced by another with a similar 

 entrance, I should probably, even in the day time, en- 

 ter it, without being struck by the change ; and bees, if 

 during their absence their old hive be taken away, and 

 a similar one set in its place, enter this last, and if it be 

 provided with brood comb contentedly take up their 

 abode in it, never troubling themselves to inquire what 

 has become of the identical habitation which they left in 

 the morning, and with the inhabitants of which, if it be 

 removed to fifty paces distance, they never resume their 

 connexion a . 



If, pursuing my illustration, you should object that no 

 man would thus contentedly sit down in a new house 

 without searching after the old one, you must bear in 

 mind that I am not aiming to show that bees have as 

 precise a memory as ours, but only that they are endow- 

 ed with some portion of this faculty, which I think the 

 above fact proves. Should you view it in a different 

 light, you will not deny the force of others that have al- 

 ready been stated in the course of our correspondence : 

 such as the mutual greetings of ants of the same society 

 when brought together after a separation of four months b ; 

 and the return of a party of bees in spring to a window 

 where in the preceding autumn they had regaled on ho- 

 ney, though none of this substance had been again placed 

 there c . 



a See the account of the mode in which the Favignanais increase 

 the number of their hives by thus dividing them. Huber, ii. 459. 

 b See above, p. 66. c Ibid. p. 199. 



