990 SUMMARY or CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



Hymenoptera sometimes differ very markedly from those of other 

 mandibulate insects, there are many points of close affinity. The 

 changes undergone by the organ ought to be principally regarded as 

 due to the more and more close union which is to be observed between 

 the galea and the intermaxillary. 



Homing Faculty of Hymenoptera. — Sir J. Lubbock, in an article* 

 on the habits of ants, bees, and wasps, discusses the question whether 

 they find their way home merely by their knowledge of land-marks, 

 or by means of some mysterious faculty usually termed a " sense of 

 direction." The ordinary impression appears to be 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 ; a view apparently corroborated by the experiments of 

 M. Fabre. The conclusions drawn from these experiments, however, 

 appear to Sir John unwarranted by the facts. 



Dr. G. J. Romanes f has repeated the experiments with certain 

 variations, and in the result is satisfied that the bees depend entirely 

 upon their special knowledge of district or land-marks, thus fully 

 corroborating those which were made by Sir John. Bees from 

 a hive kept at a house some hundred yards from the coast were 

 liberated at sea, on the shore, and on the lawn between the shore and 

 the house, but none returned. Those liberated in different parts 

 of the garden did return, though many of them had to fly a greater 

 distance to reach the hive than was the case with those liberated on 

 the lawn. 



Insects as Fertilizers.^ — Herr E. Low publishes the result of a 

 long series of observations on the visits of bees and humble-bees to 

 flowers in the botanic garden at Berlin ; classifying them, according 

 to their constancy or otherwise in the species they visit, as monotropic, 

 oligotropic, and poly tropic. He considers that H. Miiller lays too 

 exclusive stress on the length of the proboscis as determining the 

 species visited by bees ; several other factors also come into play. 



Unusual number of Legs in the Caterpillar of Lagoa.§ — Dr. A. 



S. Packard calls attention to the unusual number of legs in the cater- 

 pillar of Lagoa. The first abdominal s( gment is footless ; the second 

 bears rudimentary feet; segments three to six bear normal "prop 

 legs " ; the seventh bears a pair of rudimentary legs ; segments 

 eight and nine are footless, while the tenth bears the fully developed 

 anal or fifth pair of genuine prop legs. "While the two pairs of 

 rudimentary legs, which form soft tubercles, differ from the normal 

 legs in being much smaller and without a crown of curved spines, 

 they are protruded and actively engaged in locomotion, and in situ- 

 ation as well as the presence of basal tufts are truly homologous with 

 the normal abdominal legs. 



In the embryo of Sphinx there are ten abdominal legs, of which 

 one-half disappear before hatching, leaving the five pairs usually 



* Contemporary Review, 1885, November, 14 pp. 

 t Nature, xxxii. (1885) p. 630. 



X Jahrb. K. Bot. Gart. Berlin, iii. (1884). See Journal of Science, vii. (1885) 

 p. 543. § Amcr. Naturalist, xix. (1885) pp. 714-5 (1 fig.). 



