104 The Animal Mind 



Thus we see that in spite of some divergence of testi- 

 mony, there is evidence that ants have a variety of quali- 

 tatively different smell experiences : the smell of food and 

 of larvae, probably distinct, though there is no experimental 

 proof of the fact; the individual smell of an ant's own 

 footsteps ; a possible distinction, in some species, between 

 the smell of the outgoing and that of the incoming paths ; 

 and the different odors which seem to be responsible for 

 the discrimination between nest mates and foreigners. 

 If it were true, as Fielde maintains, that loss of the eighth 

 and ninth segments of the antennae renders an ant incapable 

 of caring for the young, then the recognition of larvae and 

 pupae would depend upon a specific odor (219). 



27. How Bees are Attracted to Flowers 



In bees the sense of smell is equally well developed. But 

 no topic in comparative psychology has been more hotly 

 disputed than the use which bees make of this sense, and 

 the extent to which they depend, rather, upon sight. Dar- 

 win (170) and H. Mliller (512, 513) thought both color and 

 fragrance influential in attracting insects to flowers. Plateau 

 maintains that the chief influence guiding bees to flowers 

 is smell, and that color has little effect. He made a num- 

 ber of experiments in which the brightly colored corollas 

 of flowers were cut off without disturbing the nectaries, 

 and claims to have found that the visits of bees to the muti- 

 lated flowers were as frequent as before (600-603, 605). 

 On the other hand, Giltay obtained opposite results ; the 

 flowers whose corollas were removed were neglected by 

 bees, while those which were covered so as to be invisible 

 but not so as to prevent the odor from escaping, were also 

 unnoticed (259). Josephine Wery found that the propor- 



