8o THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



instinct and intelligence properly so called. Sir John Lubbock, 

 whose observations on ants, bees, and wasps are so interesting 

 and so personal, is reluctant to credit the bee, from the 

 moment it forsakes the routine of its habitual labour, with 

 any power of discernment or reasoning. This attitude of 

 his may be due in some measure to an unconscious bias 

 in favour of the ants, whose ways he has more specially 

 noted ; for the entomologist is always inclined to regard 

 that insect as the more intelligent to which he has more 

 particularly devoted himself, and we have to be on our 

 guard against this little personal predilection. As a proof 

 of his theory. Sir John cites as an instance an experiment 

 within the reach of all. If you place in a bottle half-a- 

 dozen bees and the same number of flies, and lay the bottle 

 down horizontally, with its base to the window, you will 

 find that the bees will persist, till they die of exhaustion 

 or hunger, in their endeavour to discover an issue through 

 the glass ; while the flies, in less than two minutes, will all 

 have sallied forth through the neck on the opposite side. 

 From this Sir John Lubbock concludes that the intelligence 

 of the bee is exceedingly limited, and that the fly shows 

 far greater skill in extricating itself from a difficulty, and 

 in finding its way. This conclusion, however, would not 

 seem altogether flawless. Turn the transparent sphere twenty 

 times, if you will, holding now the base, now the neck, to 

 the window, and you will find that the bees will turn 

 twenty times with it, so as always to face the light. It 

 is their love of the light, their very intelligence, that is 

 their undoing in this experiment of the English savant. 

 They evidently imagine that the issue from every prison 



