252 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



It does not matter how you take a bee. She is full of 

 interest all over. In the head are eyes simple and com- 

 pound; feelers with great delicacy of touch and smell, and 

 a tongue, silent, indeed, which gallantry compels me to 

 regard as a defect, but otherwise well fitted for its special 

 task, to sip the sweets of life ; in the mid-region of the 

 body or thorax are four delicately veined and closely inter- 

 locking wings, and six legs adapted for progression on 

 surfaces rough or smooth, and as full of additional con- 

 trivances as is a schoolboy's pocket-knife ; in the abdomen 

 are wax organs, and that " centre of painful interest," the 

 sting. Nor are its habits less interesting than its structure. 

 Full of that concentrated unconscious wisdom which we 

 call instinct, she displays also, at times, mental powers of 

 a more plastic kind. 



Some interesting experiments have recently been made 

 by Mr. Romanes to test the homing faculty of bees. The 

 house where he conducted his observations is situated 

 several hundred yards from the coast, with flower gardens 

 on each side and lawns between the house and the sea. 

 Bees, therefore, starting from the house, would find their 

 nectar on either side of it, while the lawns in front would 

 be rarely or never visited, being themselves barren of 

 honey-sweets and leading only to the sea. Such being the 

 geographical conditions, Mr. Romanes placed a hive in one 

 of the front rooms on the basement of the house, and made 

 suitable arrangements by which he could remove and 

 liberate at a distance a score or so of bees at a time and 

 observe how many returned to the hive. He found that 

 bees liberated at sea, on the sea-shore, or even on the lawns 

 in front of the house, failed to find their way home ; while 

 bees liberated in the gardens, amid the flowers they were 

 wont to frequent, returned to the hive within a few 

 moments of their liberation. From such observations 



