ON THE ECONOMY OF BEES. 351 



their property as bees are, so jealous of all approach towards it, and so 

 ready to sacrifice their lives in defence of it, should suffer a colony of 

 strangers, with whose intentions they were unacquainted, to take posses- 

 sion without making some effort to defend it : nor does it seem much 

 more probable that the same animals which spent so much time in examin- 

 ing their future habitation in the cases I have mentioned, should have 

 attempted in this case to enter without knowing whether there was space 

 sufficient to contain them, and without any examination at all. I must 

 therefore infer that some previous intercourse had taken place between 

 the two swarms, and that those in the possession of the cavities were 

 not unacquainted with the intentions of their guests ; though the for- 

 mation of anything like an agreement between the different parties be 

 scarcely consistent with the limitations generally supposed to be fixed 

 by nature to the instinctive powers of the brute creation. 



Brutes have evidently language ; but it is a language of passion only, 

 and not of ideas. They express to each other sentiments of love, of fear, 

 and of anger ; but they appear to be wholly incapable of transmitting to 

 each other any ideas they have received from the impression of external 

 objects. They convey to other animals of their species, on the approach 

 of an enemy, a sentiment of danger ; but they appear wholly incapable 

 of communicating what the enemy is, or the kind of danger apprehended. 

 A language of more extensive use seems, from the preceding circum- 

 stances, to have been given to bees ; and if it be not in some degree a 

 language of ideas, it appears to be something very similar. 



When a swarm of bees issue from the parent hive, they generally soon 

 settle on some neighbouring bush or tree ; and as in this situation they 

 are generally not at all defended from rain or cold, it is often inferred 

 that they are less amply gifted with those instinctive powers that direct 

 to self-preservation than many other animals. But their object in 

 settling soon after they leave the hive is apparently nothing more than 

 to collect their numbers ; and they have generally, I believe always, 

 another place to which they intend subsequently to go : and if the 

 situation they select be not perfectly adapted to secure them from 

 injuries, it is probably, in almost all instances, the best they can discover. 

 For I have very often observed that when one of my hives was nearly 

 ready to swarm, one of the hollow trees I have mentioned (and generally 

 that best adapted for the accommodation of a swarm) was every day 

 occupied by a small number of bees ; but that after the swarm had 

 issued from that hive, and had taken possession of another, the tree was 

 wholly deserted ; whence I inferred that the swarm which would have 



