42 SENSE OF SMELL. 



unerring certainty with which it retraces its flight to its 

 hive It is allowed by all naturalists, that the acuteness of 

 the sense of smell in the bee is greater perhaps than in any 

 other animal, but there are many circumstances which can 

 be adduced, which go to prove that it cannot possibly be 

 the sense of smell which guides the bee in its labours, and, 

 consequently, the conjecture is perhaps not ill founded, that 

 that particular property of the bee must be resolved at last 

 into the mere effect of a powerful instinct, the principles of 

 which cannot be defined. We cannot adduce a more 

 apposite illustration of the foregoing remarks, than the cir- 

 cumstance witnessed by ourselves in company with Bonner, 

 on an excursion which we made to the isle of Bas at the 

 entrance of the Forth, on which there is not a single human 

 dwelling, and which presents nothing more than one un- 

 broken surface of heath, without the slightest vestige of 

 cultivation. It was, however, a matter of great surprise to 

 us both, to observe the heath covered with bees, actively 

 extracting the mellifluous juices, at the same time that we 

 knew that there was not a single hive of bees on the island. 

 It must therefore have been from the nearest land, the East 

 Lothians, that the bees had winged their flight across several 

 miles of ocean to collect the treasures which the heath of 

 the island afforded them. Here then was a subject of curious 

 and interesting inquiry. It could not be admitted that the 

 bees had been guided to the island by the sense of smell, for 

 the exhalations of the ocean were quite powerful enough to 

 neutralize any odour which might issue from the heath ; 

 nor could the bee be guided by the sense of sight, for even 

 supposing that the vision of the bee was powerful enough to 

 bring the distant island within its range, it does not thence 

 follow that the bees would enter upon a perilous speculative 

 journey over the ocean, on the mere chance of finding some- 

 thing to repay them for their risk and trouble. 



No doubt whatever can exist that the antenna? are the 



