268 ME. EOMANES' EXPERIMENTS. 



the boundary backwards and forwards in all directions. 

 Two of them, however, we watched for an hour each. 

 They meandered about, and at the end of the time 

 one was about two feet from where she started, but 

 scarcely any nearer home; the other about six feet 

 away, and nearly as much further from home. I then 

 took them up and replaced them near the nest, which 

 they at once joyfully entered. 



I mentioned some of the foregoing facts in a paper 

 which I read at the meeting of the British Association 

 at Aberdeen, and they have since been confirmed by 

 Mr. Eomanes.* 



" In connection," he says, " 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 knowledge of landmarks, or by means 

 of some mysterious faculty usually termed a sense of 

 direction. The ordinary impression ap[)ears 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 impression was 

 corroborated by the experiments of M. Fabre. The 

 eonclusions drawn from these experiments, however, 

 appeared to me, as they appeared to Sir John, un- 

 warranted by the facts ; and therefore, like him, I re- 

 peated them with certain variations. In the lesult I 

 satisfied myself that the bees depend entirely upon their 

 special knowledge of district or landmarks, and it is 

 because my experiments thus fully corroborate those 



* Nature, October 29, 1886. 



