96 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. [Ch. ii. 



antennae are said to have also another office, viz., that 

 they act as a barometer, by which bees know the stale 

 of the weather and are premonished of storms; the 

 darkening of the sky seems, however, to be frequently 

 the cause of their trooping homeward, though they care 

 not for the loudest thunder, so long as the sun continues 

 to shine. In the dark recesses of the hive the feelers 

 are exceedingly serviceable, and may truly be deno- 

 minated " eyes to the bhnd." 



Bees possess acutely the sense of smell, and, attracted 

 by the fragrance of flowers, they may be seen winging 

 their way a considerable distance in an undeviating course, 

 even sometimes in the face of weather which one , might 

 have thought they v/ould not have braved. The precise 

 seat of this sense, however, is another doubtful point. Dr. 

 DonhofF ascribes this also to the antennae, stating that if 

 these are cut off the bees lose the faculty, but regain it 

 after a time. Schonfeld takes this as proving the case 

 the other way ; but are we not familiar with analogies in 

 which on the loss of some organ its function has been 

 developed elsewhere — especially when as here the rudi- 

 ments of the lost part must have remained ? Schonfeld's 

 own surmise is that the faculty resides in the surfaces of 

 the inner respiratory organs; Dr. Hicks (the assistant 

 author of Samuelson's " Honey Bee ") places it in a 

 number of vesicles at the roots of the wings ; others 

 again attribute it to two depressions in the lower por- 

 tion of the face. But Donhoff 's reference to the antenna 



