784 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



come old, and is destined soon to be 

 plowed up. 



I will know more about this later on, 

 and after I have seen the effect of the 

 cutting for seed of a small field this 

 season. I have no seed for sale. 



Grand Island, Nebr. 



Reason or Instinct in Bees, 



JAMES M. TODD. 



If I had been asked to reply to Query 

 No. 791, I would have answered, "No !" 

 Most emphatically "No!" Who ever 

 heard of a bee doing a reasonable thing 

 in his bee experience ? My bees have 

 not a bit of sense, and I can prove it to 

 any unprejudiced mind in five minutes 

 after arriving at my apiary. 



Dr. Holbrook seems to think that he 

 has settled the question, by citing the 

 fact of bees failing to lay up Winter 

 stores in the hotter climes. I think that 

 action, or laek of action, is owing to the 

 enervating effect of the climate. In 

 other words, they are too lazy. 



The Doctor says : "The Italian bees 

 will sometimes attack,- in mass, a man 

 who has robbed their hive days after the 

 occurrence, as if to destroy him." I need 

 not tell bee-men that such is not the 

 only man they attack. If it was, there 

 might be some point to the argument. 



This calls up another extremely unrea- 

 sonable action of bees. Who has not 

 seen a lot of bees trying to extract 

 "heaven-distilled nectar" from a fresh 

 heap of barn-yard fertilizer ? Have they 

 any reason to believe it is honey ? Per- 

 haps our Utah bees have catarrh so 

 badly that their olfactories deceive 

 them. 



Animals never reason; never think. 

 Horses, dogs and other animals have 

 saved drowning persons' lives, but it was 

 "inherited instinct" — nothing more. All 

 their ancestors had been doing the same 

 thing ever since protoplasm took its first 

 breath. 



When my little three-year-old boy 

 strayed a mile from home, and insisted 

 on going farther in the same direction, 

 my large dog stopped the little fellow 

 and tried to force him home, and when 

 he found that it would be long after 

 dark before he could reach the house, 

 he began to howl most piteously with 

 all the strength of his lungs, thereby 

 attracting our attention. That was not 

 an evidence of superior dog-reason, but 

 only a proof that all dogs always do the 

 same. 



No animal ever based its actions on an 

 analogy — similarity of circumstances or 

 conditions — that anybody ever heard of. 

 They universally and invariably do alJ 

 things from instinct, never learning any- 

 thing from expeirence, or basing any o/ 

 their future actions on a past experi- 

 ence. 



If some of our very voluminous bqb- 

 writers were bees, how they would shew 

 the poor fool-bees how to adapt them- 

 selves to their varying conditions ! Th<*y 

 would teach the bee the instinct of 

 always doing what was plainly the m<>st 

 reasonable thing to do. Then tljey 

 would teach them how unreasonable! it 

 was to attempt to live on the earninggof 

 their fellows, and point them to the 

 noble example of reasoning man. 



If there is still a doubting Thomas let 

 him turn to Webster, and there learn 

 that reason is: 2. "The faculty or capac- 

 ity of the human mind, by which it is 

 distinguished from the lower animals." 

 That settles it. If any one of the inferior 

 animals should once reason, he would 

 there and then have a human mind, for 

 that is all that distinguishes between 

 the inferior and the human mind. Paley 

 says (see Webster) : "An instinct is a 

 propensity prior to experience, and inde- 

 pendent of instruction," \ 



Now, then, all I have to prove is that 

 no animal ever bases its action on in- 

 struction, but acts, always, "independent 

 of instruction." 



Payson, Utah, Nov. 14, 1891. 



Fonl-Broofl Cannot Exist in FonnSation. 



T. H. KLOEK. 



I have just read Mr. Corneil's last arti- 

 cle on "Foul-Brood Spread by Comb- 

 Foundation," with great interest, as I 

 read all of Mr. Corneil's articles. I am 

 quite interested in this vital question, as 

 I am a maker of foundation myself, and 

 also quite an enthusiastic experimenter 

 in methods of rendering wax from old 

 combs. 



Now, while reading, it suddenly 

 dawned upon me — nay, I may say It 

 flashed upon me like an electric light — 

 that none of the parties to this contro- 

 versy have yet seen the matter in its 

 true nature. 



I have often wished I were a scientist, 

 but I am not. Neither can I offer any 

 experiments showing the degree of tem- 

 perature required to kill the spores of 

 foul-brood in melted wax. But I believe 

 I can tell Mr. C. why it will not be at all . 



