NEWS OF SPRING 



hereditary experience, she will cease to make provision for 

 her winter. Biichner mentions an analogous fact, which also 

 proves the bees' adaptation to circumstances, not slow, secular, 

 unconscious and fatal, but immediate and intelligent: in Bar- 

 bados, the bees whose hives are in the midst of the refineries, 

 where they find sugar in plenty during the whole year, will 

 entirely abandon their visits to the flowers. 



Let us lastly recall the amusing manner in which the 

 bees gave the lie to two learned English entomologists, Kirby 

 and Spence: 



*^Show us," they said, "but one instance of bees having 

 substituted mud or mortar for propolis, mitys, or pissoceros, 

 and there could be no doubt of their being guided by reason." 



Hardly had they expressed this somewhat arbitrary wish, 

 when another naturalist, Andrew Knight, having coated the 

 bark of certain trees with a sort of cement made of wax and 

 turpentine, observed that his bees ceased entirely to gather 

 propolis and employed only this new and unknown substance, 

 which they found ready prepared and abundant near their 

 home. Moreover, in apiculture, when pollen is scarce, the 

 bee-keeper has but to place a few handfuls of flour at their 

 disposal for them at once to understand that this can serve the 



[94] 



