SOME SOCIAL WASPS 279 



explicable. A somewhat similar view is still held by those 

 scientists who invoke a mysterious unknown inner or 'sixth' 

 sense, but the evidence in favor of such an assumption is 

 very slight. More and more it becomes evident that ac- 

 quaintance with the position of the home hive, nest, shell 

 or cote as the case may be and the path by which the re- 

 turn may be made is only acquired gradually, even labor- 

 iously, by means of individual experience; in fact in practi- 

 cally all homing reactions individual memory must play a 

 role and one which is by no means insignificant. It follows 

 that all that can be properly understood by the homing in- 

 stinct is the basic impulse to regain home after an ab- 

 sence, together with a tendency to make use of certain sense 

 data or impressions and of associations between them to 

 achieve that end. 



"In confirmation of this view of the necessity for indi- 

 vidual experience certain facts may be cited. First, birds 

 and insects appear unable to find their way home even 

 when quite near if from youth or through removal to a 

 strange neighborhood they are unfamiliar with their sur- 

 roundings. Secondly, bees are said to be unable to regain 

 the hive in the dark. These insects it would seem depend 

 chiefly upon visual impressions and recognition of visual 

 landmarks for finding their way. If they possess an un- 

 known homing sense, their inability to return in the dark 

 becomes incomprehensible." 



The conclusions of Smith apply very fittingly to this 

 investigation. And since his deductions are of a general 

 nature, garnered from the observations of workers in var- 

 ious fields, such as C. H. Turner, Peckhams, Buttel-Reepen, 

 it merely shows that Polistes, in principle, differs in nowise 

 from most other comparable organisms. 



In Polistes the proportion that return to the nest is in 

 inverse ratio to the distance that they must travel to regain 



