OBSERVATIONS ON INSECT LIFE 185 



insect, tending to keep more in the shady under- 

 growth and less on the open flowers. 



Humble-bees are well known to play an important 

 part in the fertilization of many flowers. It was 

 instructive to watch the untiring industry with which 

 they sought the nectar from a pretty little blue blossom, 

 the Strobilanthus dalhousianus. In this act they 

 showed a good example of the variability of instinct, 

 how different individuals of the same species will each 

 employ its own method in order to attain a common 

 end. For some of the bees were in the habit of 

 pushing their way into the interior of the funnel- 

 shaped blossoms in order to reach the nectar, while 

 others had learnt to adopt the simpler plan of drilling 

 a hole with their mandibles through the base of the 

 corolla and in this way secured the nectar by a shorter 

 route. Now this variation in the instinct appears to 

 be very fixed in different individuals, each always 

 acting in its own peculiar way ; for I once watched a 

 pair of bees belonging to the species Bombus hcEmor- 

 rhoidalis actively engaged upon a profusion of Strobi- 

 lanthus, and of the two, one always gained its end by 

 perforating the corolla, while the other persisted in 

 the more laborious task of pushing its way into the 

 interior of the flowers. 



There is another point worth notice in this little 

 observation. I suppose it is reasonable to assume 

 that it was the original habit of the humble-bees to 

 come direct to the mouth of the blossom in the same 

 way as other insects and to reach the nectar by the 

 obvious route. The plan of cutting a hole through 

 the corolla is a new device, a later instinct developed 

 in order to give the b^e? less trouble, to save more of 



