INTELLIGENCE OF FLOWERS 



open air. It was the uncertainty, the inclemency of our 

 northern seasons that gave them the idea of seeking a shelter 

 in hollow trees or a hole in the rocks. This ingenious idea 

 restored to the work of looting and to the care of the eggs the 

 thousands of bees stationed around the combs to maintain the 

 necessary heat. It is not uncommon, especially in the South, 

 during exceptionally mild summers, to find them reverting 

 to the tropical manners of their ancestors.^ 



Another fact: when transported to Australia or Cali- 

 fornia, our black bee completely alters her habits. After one 

 or two years, finding that summer is perpetual and flowers for 

 ever abundant, she will live from day to day, content to gather 

 the honey and pollen indispensable for the day's consumption; 

 and, her recent and thoughtful observation triumphing over 



^ I had just written these lines, when M. E. L. Bouvier made a communication 

 in the Academy of Science {cf. the report of the 7th of May, 1906) on the subject of 

 two nidifications in the open air observed in Paris, one in a Sophora japonica, the 

 other in a chestnut-tree. The latter, which hung from a small branch furnished with 

 two almost contiguous forks, was the more remarkable of the two, because of its evident 

 and intelligent adaptation to particularly difficult circumstances: 



"The bees," says M, de Parville, in his review in the Journal des Debats of the 

 31st of May, 1906, "built consolidating pillars and resorted to really remarkable artifices 

 of protection and ended by transforming the two forks of the chestnut-tree into a solid 

 ceiling. An ingenious man would certainly not have done so well. 



"To protect themselves from the rain, they had put up fences, thicker walls and 

 sunblinds. One can conceive no idea of the perfection of the industry of the bees, short 

 of closely observing the architecture of the two nidifications, now at the Museum." 



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