552 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



process is so little connected with that of building, that though it takes 

 place in some combs in three or four days, it does not in others for several 

 months, though both are equally employed for the same uses. 1 Huber 

 ascertained by accurate experiments that this tinge is not owing to the heat 

 of the hives ; to any vapours in the air which they include; to any emana- 

 tions from the wax or honey ; nor to the deposition of this last in the cells ; 

 but he inclines to think it is occasioned by a yellow matter which the bees 

 seem to detach from their mandibles, and to apply to the surface which 

 they are varnishing, by repeated strokes of these organs and of the fore- 

 feet. 2 



In their out-of-door operations several distinct instincts are concerned. 

 By one they are led to extract honey from the nectaries of flowers ; by 

 another to collect pollen after a process involving very complicated mani- 

 pulations, and requiring a singular apparatus of brushes and baskets ; and 

 that must surely be considered a third which so remarkably and bene- 

 ficially restricts each gathering to the same plant. It is clearly a distinct 

 instinct which inspires bees with such dread of rain, that even if a cloud 

 pass before the sun, they return to the hive in the greatest haste 3 ; and 

 that seems to me not less so, which teaches them to find their way back 

 to their home after the most distant and intricate wanderings. When bees 

 have found the direction in which their hive lies, Huber says they fly to it 

 with an extreme rapidity, and as straight as a ball from a musket 4 ; and if 

 their hives were always in open situations, one might suppose, as Huber 

 seems inclined to think, that it is by their sight they are conducted to 

 them. But hives are frequently found in small gardens embowered in 

 wood, and in the midst of villages surrounded and interspersed with trees 

 and buildings, so as to make it impossible that they can be seen from a 

 distance. If you had been with me in 1815, in the famous Pays de Waes 

 in Flanders, where the country is a perfect flat, and the inhabitants so 

 enamoured either of the beauty or profit of trees that their fields, which 

 are rarely above three acres in extent, are constantly surrounded with a 

 double row, making the whole district one vast wood, you would have 

 pitied the poor bees if reduced to depend on their own eyesight for retrac- 

 ing the road homeward. In vain, during my stay at St. Nicholas, I sallied 

 out at every outlet to try to gain some idea of the extent and form of the 

 town. Trees trees trees still met me, and intercepted the view in 

 every direction ; and I defy any inhabitant bee of this rural metropolis, 

 after once quitting its hive, ever to gain a glimpse of it again until nearly 

 perpendicularly over it. The bees, therefore, of the Pays de Waes, and 

 consequently all other bees, must be led to their abodes by instinct, as 

 certainly as it is instinct that directs the migrations of birds or of fishes, 

 or domestic quadrupeds to find out their homes from inconceivable dis- 

 tances. 5 When they have reached the hive, another instinct leads them to 



i Huber, ii. 274. 2 Ibid. ii. 275. 



3 Ibid. i. 356. 4 Ibid. ii. 367. 



5 The following striking anecdote of this last species of instinct, in an animal not 

 famed for sagacity, was related to me by Lieutenant (now Lieut. -Colonel) Alderson 

 (Royal Engineers), who was personally acquainted with the facts. In March, 

 1816, an ass, the property of Captain Dundas) R. N., then at Malta, was shipped ou 

 board the Ister frigate, Captain Forrest, bound from Gibraltar for that island. The 

 vessel having struck on some sands off the Point de Gat, at some distance from 

 the shore, the ass was thrown overboard to give it a chance of swimming to land 



