252 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



Miiller found that this practice was especially common 

 when flowers grow in masses and are very much visited. 

 Gnawing the hole means losing time in the first instance, 

 but it saves much time afterwards. The bees are able to 

 discover more rapidly what blossoms are worth anything. 

 The more minutely such facts are inquired into the more 

 significant they become. Thus Professor Francis Darwin 

 noted in regard to the wood- vetch (Lathyms sylvestris) 

 that the bee bites the hole just at the best place. The 

 honey is secreted within a nectary enclosed by the united 

 filaments of nine stamens ; there are two ' nectar-holes ' at 

 the base ; and the bees gnaw a hole exactly over the left 

 nectar-hole, which is larger than the right. 



' It is difficult to say how the bees have acquired this 

 habit. Whether they have discovered the inequality in 

 the size of the nectar-holes in sucking the flowers in the 

 proper way, and have then utilized this knowledge in deter- 

 mining where to gnaw the hole ; or whether they have 

 found out the best situation by biting through the vexillum 

 at various points, and have afterwards remembered its 

 situation in visiting other flowers. But in either case 

 they show a remarkable power of making use of what they 

 have learned by experience '. 



In other words, there is distinct intrusion of intelligence 

 into the domain of instinct. 



In further illustration of the subtle admixture of intelli- 

 gence with instinct, one of Fritz Miiller's observations 

 may be cited. In a hive of Brazilian stingless bees (Trigona 

 mirim), the workers had completed and filled forty-seven 

 cells, eight on a nearly finished comb, thirty-seven on the 

 following, and four around the first cell of a new comb. 



