THE SENSE OF DIRECTION IN WASPS. 211 



CHAPTEK XYL 



ON THE SENSE OF DIRECTION IN WASPS. 

 PL IX., fig. 5; PI. XH., figs. 14. 



Much of a highly speculative character has been written upon 

 the homing faculty, and, in lieu of a better explanation of cer- 

 tain facts, animals and certain tribes of men have been supposed 

 to possess a sense of direction that was so far independent of 

 experience and instruction as to be instinctive, and, consequent 

 ly, to a very high degree unerring. Mr. Darwin when con- 

 sidering this matter in relation to bees and wasps, suggested that 

 they kept their course by a process of dead reckoning, every 

 turn that was taken in their excursions being noted and remem- 

 bered, but Fabre, after testing this suggestion by experiments, 

 concluded that the facts could not be explained in this way. Sir 

 John Lubbock and Romanes have also made interesting observa- 

 tions on this subject which tend to confirm Fabre. 



In a former paper, on the social wasps, we narrated a number 

 of experiments which we had made to determine whether wasps 

 could find their way back to the nest when they had been car- 

 ried to a distance. These experiments served to show that the 

 insects returned to their home unless they had been taken so far 

 away that the over-looked country, as they circled higher and 

 higher, presented no familiar object to their view. With the 

 solitary wasps we have attacked the problem from the other end. 

 In our earlier studies we observed what they did in attempting 

 to return to the nest; in the later ones we have watched them 

 when, after making a nest, they prepared to leave it to go out 

 into the fields or woods in search of food or prey, thinking that 

 the procedure of different species under these circumstances 

 would afford a clue to the faculty upon which they depended to 



