630 . 
HOMING FACULTY OF HYMENOPTERA 
N connection with Sir John Lubbock’s paper at the 
British Association, in which this subject is treated, it 
is perhaps worth while to describe some experiments 
which I made last year. The question to be answered is 
whether bees find their way home merely by their know- 
ledge of landmarks or by ineans of some mysterious faculty 
usually termeda sense of direction. The ordinary impression 
appears to have been that they do so in virtue of some 
such sense, and are therefore independent of any special 
knowledge of the district in which they may be suddenly 
liberated ; and, as Sir John Lubbock observes, this im- 
pression was corroborated by the experiments of M. 
Fabre. The conclusions drawn from these experiments, 
however, appeared to me, as they appeared to Sir John, 
unwarranted by the facts; and therefore, like him, I 
repeated them with certain variations. In the result I 
satisfied myself that the bees depend entirely upon their 
special knowledge of district or land-marks, and it is 
because my experiments thus fully corroborate those 
which were made by Six John that it now occurs to me to 
publish them. 
The house where I conducted the observations is 
situated several hundred yards from the coast, with flower 
gardens on each side and lawns between the house and the 
sea. Therefore bees starting from the house would find their 
honey on either side of it, while the lawns in front would 
be rarely or never visited—being themselves barren of 
honey and leading only to the sea. Such being the geo- 
graphical conditions, I placed a hive of bees in one of the 
front rooms on the basement of the house. When the 
bees became thoroughly well acquainted with their new 
quarters by flying in and out of the open window fora 
fortnight, I began the experiments. The modus operandi 
consisted in closing the window after dark when all the 
bees were in their hive, and also slipping a glass shutter in 
front of the hive door, so that all the bees were doubly 
imprisoned. Next morning I slightly raised the glass 
shutter, thus enabling any desired number of bees to 
escape. When the desired number had escaped, the 
glass shutter was again closed, and all the liberated bees 
were caught as they buzzed about the inside of the shut 
window. These bees were then counted into a box, the 
window of the room opened, and a card well smeared 
over with birdlime placed upon the threshold of the bee- 
hive, or just in front of the closed glass shutter. The 
NATURE 
object of all these arrangements was to obviate the ne- | 
cessity of marking the bees, and so to enable me not merely 
to experiment with ease upon any number of individuals 
that I might desire, but also to feel confident that no one 
individual could return to the hive unnoticed. For 
whenever a bee returned it was certain to become en- 
tangled in the bird-lime, and whenever I found a bee so 
entangled, I was certain that it was one which I had taken 
from the hive, as there were no other hives in the 
neighbourhood. 
Such being the method, I began by taking a score of 
bees in the box out to sea, where there could be no land- 
marks to guide the insects home. Had any of these 
insects returned, I should next have taken another score 
out to sea (after an interval of several days, so as to be sure 
that the first lot had become permanently lost), and then, 
before liberating them, have rotated the box in a sling 
for a considerable time, in order to see whether this would 
have confused their sense of direction. But, as none of 
the bees returned after the first experiment, it was clearly 
needless tq proceed to the second. Accordingly I 
liberated the next lot of bees on the sea-shore, and, as 
none of these returned, I liberated another lot on the 
lawn between the shore and the house. I was somewhat 
surprised to find that neither did any of these return, 
although the distance from the lawn to the hive was not 
above 200 yards. Lastly, I liberated bees in different 
[ Oct. 29, 1885 
parts of the flower garden, and these I always found 
stuck upon the bird-lime within a few minutes of their 
liberation. Indeed, they often arrived before I had had 
time to run from the place where I had liberated them to 
the hive. Now, as the garden was a large one, many of 
these bees had to fly a greater distance, in order to reach 
the hive, than was the case with their lost sisters upon 
the lawn, and therefore I could have no doubt that their 
uniform success in finding their way home so immediately 
was due to their special knowledge of the flower garden, 
and not to any general sense of direction. 
I may add that, while in Germany a few weeks ago, I 
tried on several species of ant the same experiments as 
Sir John Lubbock describes in his paper as having been 
tried by him upon English species, and here also I ob- 
tained identical results; in all cases the ants were hope- 
lessly lost if liberated more than a moderate distance 
from their nest. GEORGE J. ROMANES 
THE HEIGHTS OF CLOUDS 
peem the Upsala Observatory comes an account of 
fairly exact measurements of the heights of clouds 
during the summer of last year, and a very interesting 
publication it is. It appears that when the circumpolar 
expeditions were planned the Swedish Meteorological 
Observatory furnished their station at Spitzbergen with 
three theodolites, of a somewhat novel though simple 
construction, for the double purpose of observing the 
altitude of the aurora and that of clouds. The difficulty 
that has always been felt in such observations has been 
that of easy intercommunication between the different 
observers, so as to fix on the particular part of the 
cloud of which the height was to be measured. Thanks 
to modern invention this difficulty was got over by con-- 
necting each station with a telephone. The reported 
good results obtained at the circumpolar station—the 
publication of which, by the by, has not been done as 
yet—induced Herr Hildebrandsson, the director of the 
meteorological observatory at Upsala, to commence a set 
of similar observations there. On a couple of pillars, 
about 450 yards apart, and placed on an approximately 
north and south line, a couple of theodolites were erected, 
the stations being connected by telephones. The theodo- 
lites employed may be described as ordinary theodolites, 
the object glass of the telescope being replaced by a large 
open ring, across which were stretched a couple of cross 
wires, whilst the eye-piece consisted of a simple hole of 
3mm. in diameter. When observing near the sun dark 
glasses would be placed in front of this orifice. As might 
be expected, there are several unavoidable errors in using 
these instruments, the principal of which are the un- 
certainty of an identical point in a cloud being measured 
at each station, and the want of synchronism of the obser- 
vation—a very important point when clouds are travelling 
with any speed. The method of observation was some- 
what laborious, and was as follows. The two observers, 
each at a theodolite, agreed as well as they could on the 
point in the cloud to be observed, and at a particular time, 
fixed upon in advance, brought the cross wires on this 
somewhat indefinite spot, and then read theirinstruments, 
noted the time of observation, described the cloud, and if 
possible sketched it. A second observation of the same 
point gave the direction and rate of motion of the cloud. 
Perhaps one of the most easily observed clouds is the 
cumulus, and we find from a table given that the 
probable error of observation is very considerable. 
Thus, in one whose height was calculated to be 1,639 
metres, the probable error of one observation was 748 
metres, and of the mean of 16 observations 187. Out 
of 101 observations the mean height of a cumulus was 
1,690 metres, and the probable error of the mean 40 
Parnes 
“Mesures des Hauteurs et des Mouvements des Nuages.”’ 
Ekholm et K. L. Hagstrém. 
