ANECDOTES OF ANTS AND BEES. 



this knowledge, they afterwards constantly proceeded at once to 

 the most direct mode of obtaining the honey ; so that he could 

 always distinguish bees that had been old visitors of the flowers 

 from new ones, the latter being at a loss how to proceed, 

 while the former flew at once to their object. 



Fig. 10. The Humble Bee. 



64. A similar fact is related of the humble bees by Huber,* 

 who, when their bodies are too large to enter the corolla of a 

 flower, cut a hole at its base with their mandibles, through which 

 they insert the proboscis to extract the honey. If these insects 

 adopted this expedient from the first, and invariably followed it, 

 the act might be ascribed to instinct ; but as they have recourse to 

 it only after having vainly tried to introduce their body in the 

 usual way into the opening of the corolla, it can scarcely Jbe 

 denied that they are guided by intelligence in the attainment of 

 their end. The marks of experience, memory, and comparison, 

 are unequivocal. When they find their efforts to enter the first 

 flower to which they address themselves fruitless, they do not 

 repeat them upon other flowers of the same sort, but directly 

 attack the base of the corolla. Huber witnessed such pro- 

 ceedings repeatedly in the case of bean-blossoms. 



65. Insects give proofs without number of the possession of the 

 faculty of memory, without which it would be impossible to turn 

 to account the results of experience. Thus, for example, each 

 bee, on returning from its excursions, never fails to recognise its 

 own hive, even though that hive should be surrounded by various 

 others in all respects similar to it. 



66. This recognition of home is so much the more marked by 

 traces of intelligence rather than by those of instinct, inasmuch 

 as it depends not on any character merely connected with the 



* Philosophical Transactions, vol. vi., p. 222. 



141 



