260 The Animal Mind 



psychological aspect in every case means, while the learning 

 is going on, the diminution of unpleasantness and the increase 

 of pleasantness ; apart from this, when the learning is com- 

 pleted, it differs in the different cases as regards the part played 

 by the consciousness of certain more or less accurately dis- 

 criminated objects. As the learning process proceeds, such 

 objects, as we have seen, come to stand in the focus of atten- 

 tion, so that to the cat put in the puzzle-box the string that 

 opens the door is instantly attended to ; the chick, half auto- 

 matically pecking at various objects on the ground, becomes 

 vividly conscious of the appearance of a bee among them ; 

 the monkey becomes aware of the difference in color between 

 two vessels otherwise quite similar. 



91. Visual Memory in Homing 



Doubtless all the phenomena which animals exhibit in these 

 various experimental tests are displayed also in their ordinary 

 and normal life. There is one mode of behavior, however, 

 the existence of which has been established by careful ob- 

 servation of an animal in its proper environment, that does 

 not easily find an analogue among the facts we have been 

 describing. I refer to the exercise of visual memory by bees 

 and wasps. The case of the bee, indeed, finding its way from 

 repeated excursions back to a hive which remains in the same 

 place, may ultimately involve the formation of a habit of 

 movement like that displayed in experiments by the labyrinth 

 method. We have already noted on pp. 138, 139 some of the 

 evidence that bees are, at least in their earlier flights from the 

 hive, guided back by visual memory. Lubbock found that 

 bees from a hive near the seashore, when taken out on the 

 water and liberated, were unable to find their way home, al- 

 though the distance was less than their usual range of flight 

 on land; and he ascribes their failure to the lack of visual 



