EXPERIMENTS WITH BEES. 263 



wayside, and whirled the bag rapidly round his head. 

 While he was doing so a good woman came by, who 

 was not a little surprised to find the professor stand- 

 ing in front of the old cross, solemnly whirling a bag- 

 round his head, and, M. Fabre fears, strongly suspected 

 liim of some satanic practice. However this may be, 

 M. Fabre, having sufiSciently whirled his bees, started off 

 back in the opposite direction, and carried his prisoners 

 to a distance from their home of three kilometres. 

 Here he again \^hirled them round, and then let them 

 go one by one. They made one or two turns round 

 him, and then flew off in the direction of home. In the 

 meanwhile his daughter Antonia was on the watch. 

 The first bee did the mile and three-quarters in a 

 quarter of an hour. Some hours after two more re- 

 turned ; the other seven did not reappear. 



The next day he repeated this experiment with ten 

 other bees. The first returned in five minutes, and two 

 more in about an hour. In this case, again, seven out 

 of ten failed to find their way home. 



In another experiment he took forty-nine bees. 

 When let out, a few started wrong, but he says that 

 "lorsque la rapidite du vol me laisse reconnaitre la 

 direction suivie j " the great majority flew homewards. 

 The first arrived in fifteen minutes. In an hour and 

 a half eleven had returned, in five hours six more, 

 making seventeen out of forty-nine. Again he experi- 

 mented with twenty, of which seven found their way 

 home. In the next experiment he took the bees rather 

 further — to a distance of about two and a quarter miles. 

 In an hour and a half two had returned, in three hours 

 and a half seven more ; total, nine out of forty. Lastly, 

 he took thirty bees: fifteen marked rose he took by 



