90 



THE HONEY-BEE. 



on the green ; and so on successively on the orange, 

 yellow, plain, and red. I repeated the experiment a 

 hundred times, using two • dififerent hives — one in 

 Kent, and one in Middlesex — and spreading the 

 observations over some time, so as to experiment 

 with different bees, and under varied circumstances. 

 Adding the numbers together, it, of course, follows 

 that the greater the preference shown for each colour, 

 the lower will be the number standing against it. 



" The following table gives the first day's observa- 

 tions in extenso : — 



" In the next series of experiments the bees had 

 been trained for three weeks to come to a particular 

 spot on a large lawn, by placing from time to time 

 honey on a piece of plain glass. This naturally 

 gave the plain glass an advantage ; nevertheless, as 

 will be seen, the blue still retained its pre-eminence. 

 It seems hardly necessary to give the observations 



