May 3, 1883] 



NATURE 



5 



St. Andrews 



St. Andrews is the one rural university in Scotland. Its 

 small constituency is of a somewhat peculiar kind, drawn from 

 many sources, not by mere "gravitation," but by natural choice, 

 and probably would not foil w it if removed to a town. When 

 the Tay Bridge has been set up again, St. Andrews will be 

 within thirty-five minutes of Dundee. The changes which may 

 result from this are difficult to forecast. Meanwhile the Univer- 

 sity is doing, although a limited, yet a good and useful work, 

 and is blessed with many distinguished sons. If the career of 

 each of these men could be traced from the Peebleshire U.P. 

 manse, or the Forfarshire village schoolhouse, or the Cupar 

 building-yard, to the place in life which they now fill and adorn, 

 the history would be in many ways instructive, and it would be 

 seen that the ideal of a "ladder" of merit (for lads of merit) 

 is to some extent realised north of the Tweed. 



The English universities, with all their wealth and all their 

 noble endeavours, have never yet, like those in Scotland, had 

 "their root spread out by the waters " of the life of the people. 

 The Scottish universities fulfil the Christian precept of asking 

 the poor to their feast. But as a consequence of this they have 

 few rich friends, and have the more need of being visited with 

 "the dew of heaven from above." 



St. Andrews, however, has been unfairly dealt with in a 

 special way, and it is an unfairness which can be remedied under 

 the present Bill without making any demand upon the public 

 funds. Three of her Chairs and more than half of her bursaries 

 were left by the Commissioners of 1858 under the care of private 

 patronage. The removal of this blot would inevitably be fol- 

 lowed by an acces-ion of healthy life. And the place is 

 already by no means deficient in corporate vitality. Its under- 

 graduates, numbering a few more than those at Exeter College, 

 Oxford, and a few less than those at Iialliol or Christ Church, 

 have their football club, golf club, gymnastic club, two debating 

 societies, musical association, domestic and Shakespearian asso- 

 ciation, and others, to which has recently been added a volunteer 

 artillery corps. At football they have somehow managed to 

 hold their own against the 'arger universities. Suppose that by 

 the efrorts of the new Commission some Concordat were arranged 

 between this old yet vigorous life and the Herculean infant 

 across the Tay, that by this means a complete Science Faculty 

 could be e-tablished in this part of Scotland, and a new develop- 

 ment given to the already existing St. Andrews Science Degree, 

 would there not be then a promise for the future? 



In spite of rail and telegraph, the feline attachment to places 

 is still shared by man. To deracinate is easier than to plant, 

 easier to plant than to make what is planted grow. Wise states- 

 manship will follow nature, and avail itself of elements which 

 exist, if only life is found in them. 



To return to the more general aspect of the question : the 

 Scottish Universities have a claim to S'ate recognition which 

 has hardly been sufficiently considered. They are the spiritual 

 progenitors (" though honest, yet poor," like Launcelot Gobbo's 

 father) of all University life in Great Britain that does not 

 directly flow from Oxford and Cambridge (-ee the New Monthly 

 Magazine for the year 1825), and for much of this too. Prof. 

 Stuart of Cambridge is a St. Andrews man. Had he been an 

 Etonian or Harrovian it is not too much to say that the higher 

 education in many English towns would be in a different position 

 from that on which they congratulate themselves to-day. X. 



Cape Bees and "Animal Intelligence" 



I keep a large number of hives, chiefly of Cape bees, and 

 find that their habits closely resemble those of European honey- 

 bees ; but in the course of my observations I have met with an 

 instance of sagacity on the part of Cape bees, which, although 

 it may also have been observed with regard to European or 

 American bees, has not, so far as I am aware, been recorded 

 in any treatise upon the subject. Last year my gardener hived 

 a swarm of bees, which were not however satisfied with their 

 new hive, their scouts having probably already selected some 

 hollow tree for their future habitation. They accordingly left, 

 but were soon again secured. In order, if possible, to prevent 

 their deserting the new hive, I placed tl e queen in a queen-cage 

 (a small perforated metal box with circular holes of the diameter 

 of an ordinary pin's head), which I fixed to the roof inside the 

 hive. A few days afterwards there were several honeycombs in 

 the hive, and in most of the cells eggs had been dep ■sited. Now 

 there could be only three ways of accounting for these eggs in 



the cells : there might have been more than one queen in the 

 swarm, or there might have been an egg-laying neuter among 

 them, or el-e the eggs must have been those of the imprisoned 

 queen. Accordingly I several times examined the swarm and 

 the honeycombs (the hive being a frame hive), and satisfied 

 myself that there was no other queen in the swarm. The queen 

 was kept in the cage until some of the larvae had come to 

 maturity, the bees of course feeding her through the holes of the 

 cage, and I found that the young bees were neuters, and not 

 drones as they would have been if the eggs had been laid by a 

 neuter. The only explanation, therefore, of the presence of the 

 eggs in the cells was that they had been laid or passed by the 

 queen through the holes of the cage, and taken up and deposited 

 in the cells of some of the workers. This performance showed 

 so much sagacity on the part of the bees, especially the mother 

 bee, that I subsequently repeated the experiment with eight 

 other swarms, and in two instances there was an exactly similar 

 result. Two of the six remaining swarms were so dissatisfied 

 with the new hives offered to them that they refused to build 

 any comb, and ultimately deserted the hive, leaving the caged 

 queen behind, although I was quite satisfied that neither swarm 

 had a second queen among their number. I may here remark 

 that it is much more difficult to retain a swarm of Cape bees 

 in an artificial hive selected for them than appears to be the case 

 in Europe or America, the explanation perhaps being that they 

 are not sufficiently domesticated, and prefer being queenless in 

 a natural hive selected by themselves to remaining with their 

 imprisoned queen in a hive they do not approve of. It is pos- 

 sible of course that the two swarms which left their queen behind 

 may havejoined some other occupied hives or may have returned 

 to iheir own former hive ; but I may state that on each occasion 

 I had removed the hives from which the swarms had issued to a 

 considerable distance from their former position. The four 

 remaining swarms upon which I experimented were satisfied 

 with their new hives and built combs, but no eggs were found 

 depo ited in the cells. One of these swarms had an imported 

 fertile Italian queen ; the second and third had Cape queens, 

 and the fourth had an Italian queen, the progeny of the im- 

 poited one ; the three first began laying in the cells soon after 

 being released, but the fourth never laid eggs at all. As to the 

 last of these queens, I fear she was rather roughly handled when 

 caught, and that this may explain her rot laying at all ; but I 

 may add that I have not yet succeeded in obtaining queens 

 proved to be feriile from among the progeny of imported Italian 

 queens. There are very few Italian drones in the colony, or at 

 all events in the neighbourhood of Cape Town, and if the Cape 

 drone does not cross with the Italian queen this would be a 

 sufficient explanation of my failure. While upon this subject I 

 may state that we have a yellow bee in South Africa somewhat 

 resembling the Italian, but the neuters are a little smaller. They 

 more closely resemble the Egyptian bees, judging by the descrip- 

 tions I have read of the latter ; but some of their habits are 

 different, for they have only one queen in a hive, and they gather 

 and use propolis, which the Egyptians are said not to do. 

 But most of our Cape bees rather resemble the English bee, 

 although considerably smaller, and the rings of their abdomen 

 are of a lighter brown colour, and I confess till a few years ago 

 I was not aware that we had any other variety. To my surprise, 

 however, about three years ago a swarm of the yell .w-winged 

 bees arrived at my place. At first I took them to be Italians, 

 but I had not yet then imported any myself, nor have I since 

 been able to discover that any one else had done so. The 

 queen and drones were exactly like the Italian queen and drones, 

 but the neuters were a little shorter and more slender. 1 have 

 unfortunately not secured any fresh swarms from the one which 

 I hived, but the neuters that are now in the hive cannot be dis- 

 tinguished from the ordinary Cape worker. There are not at 

 present any drones in the hive, and, as the hive has no frames, 

 it is difficult (without first driving the swarm) to discover whether 

 the queen, now in the hive, has the same appearance as the one 

 which originally arrived. Strangely enough I continually find 

 drones of the yellow variety in hives of the ordinary Cape brow n 

 bee. I sometimes, but rarely, see yellow workers visiting my 

 flowers and fruit, and on a recent visit to Natal I saw numbers 

 of bees visiting a sugar store in Durban, all of which were of 

 the yellow variety. I was not sufficiently long in Natal to be 

 able to say whether there are any of the ordinary Cape bees in 

 that colony, but in the Transvaal I have seen both varieties in 

 the fields. 



Before concluding I wish, with your permission, to make a 



