248 WASP STUDIES AFIELD 



leaving here it described a quarter-circle and travelled three 

 hundred feet in a northwesterly direction, where it alighted 

 in another tree and was lost to sight. No. 6 went directly 

 northward and landed in an oak tree; in leaving here it 

 turned its course abruptly toward the southeast and was 

 soon lost to sight. 



The great variation in ( the initial directions of their 

 flight, and the marked difference in the intervals at which 

 these queens returned would tend to show that the point 

 of release one-eighth mile from their home was new to their 

 experience, and that they reached home by virtue of the 

 method of trial and error, or perseverance. 



Of course, if they flew above the tree-tops they could have 

 seen, if they had so great a range of vision, the conspicuous 

 group of farm buildings which was their home; but at that 

 height they could also have seen a strikingly similar group 

 of buildings at the same distance westward, which they 

 might easily have mistaken for their own. But, regardless 

 of the cause or the method, it is wonderful to know that 

 every one of these six queens made the return flight in from 

 22 to 72 minutes. This experiment shows, at least, that if 

 some unknown force draws them back to the nest, this force 

 does not act by the most economical method as to either 

 time or space. 



Experiment II 



June 20. This experiment was made with nine wasps 

 which were carried to Becks. The distance along the road 

 was about 2 l / 2 miles, but the distance as a bird flies was 

 approximately Ij4 miles. Both the home and the point of 

 release were on about the same level; this eliminated the 

 factor of varied elevations. Five of the wasps, nos. 2, 3, 

 4, 5 and 6, had been used in experiment I, where they had 

 been eminently successful in making the one-eighth-mile 



