INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 563 



A similar instance of knowledge gained by experience in the hive-bee is 

 related by Mr. Wailes. He observed that all the bees, on their first visit 

 to the blossoms of a passion-flower (Passiflora c&ruled) on the wall of his 

 house, were for a considerable time puzzled by the numerous overwrapping 

 rays of the nectary, and only after many trials, sometimes lasting two or 

 three minutes, succeeded in finding the shortest way to the honey at the 

 bottom of the calyx ; but experience having taught them 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 visiters of the flowers from new ones, the last being invariably at 

 first long at a loss, while the former flew at once to their object. 1 



My third fact is supplied by the same ants whose sagacious choice of 

 the vicinity of Reaumur's glass hives for their colony has been just related 

 to you. He tells us that of these ants, of which there were such swarms 

 on the outside of the hive, not a single one was ever perceived within ; 

 and infers that, as they are such lovers of honey, and there was no dif- 

 ficulty in finding crevices to enter in at, they were kept without, solely 

 from fear of the consequences. 2 Whence arose this fear ? We have no 

 ground for supposing ants endowed with any instinctive dread of bees ; 

 and Reaumur tells us, that when he happened to leave in his garden hives 

 of which the bees had died, the ants then never failed to enter them and 

 regale themselves with the honey. It seems reasonable, therefore, to 

 attribute it to experience. Some of the ants, no doubt, had tried to 

 enter the peopled as they did the empty hive, but had been punished for 

 their presumption ; and the dear-bought lesson was not lost on the rest of 

 the community. 



The fourth instance under this head which I shall mention is that sup- 

 plied by an Indian species of ant (Formica indefessa, Sykes). A colony of 

 these voracious insects in Col. Sykes's house at Poona having been cir- 

 cumvented in their repeated and successful attacks on the sweetmeats 

 always left on a side-board, when it was removed to a distance from the 



p. 550., on the variations in the mode in which humble-bees pierce, as above de- 

 scribed, the long-tubed corollas of different labiated plants. In Stachys coccinea, 

 Mirabilis Jalapa, and Salvia coccinea, each corolla had a hole on its upper side near 

 the base, whereas in Salvia Grahami, which has a more elongated calyx, this part also 

 was also invariably pierced ; and in Pentstemon argutus the rather broader corolla had 

 always two holes, in order to give the bees more ready access to the nectar on both 

 sides of the germen. All these holes are on the upper side of the base of the corolla ; 

 but in the common Antirrhinum they are on the under side, so as to be directly in 

 front of the nectary. Town-educated humble-bees Mr. Darwin found always draw 

 off the nectar from these last-named flowers growing in the London Zoological 

 Gardens through these artificial orifices ; while from two years' observations he is 

 persuaded that their rustic brethren are less clever, and invariably gain access to the 

 nectar of snap-dragons growing in the country by forcing open the elastic lower lip 

 and creeping into the flower. Possibly different species or sexes of humble-bees 

 may be here concerned ; but one instance, in which the same individual bee cut 

 holes in the base of some flowers of Rhododendron azaleoides and entered the mouth of 

 others, seems as strong a proof of reason as can well be imagined, as the proceedings 

 of the little animal were evidently varied according to the varying necessity of the 

 case ; and if, as Mr. Darwin thinks he has observed, the hive-bees frequenting these 

 flowers by degrees came to discover and avail themselves of the orifices made by the 

 humble-bees, this fact, as he justly remarks, offers a very striking proof of acquired 

 knowledge in insects. 



i Entom, Mag. i. 525. 2 Reaum. v. 709. 



