122 Report of Schimmel $ Co. April/October 1917. 



of l 1 / 2 cm. diameter. The covers of the boxes could be opened. Two of the 4 boxes 

 which were placed in readiness always remained empty. The rest were filled with any 

 odour, mostly a sweet-smelling one which most resembled the scent of natural flowers 

 and was always available in large quantities. The boxes besides contained a little 

 receptacle filled with sugar-water which served as nourishment for the bees after being 

 previously attracted by honey. In order to avoid training them to visit the same spot 

 always the relative positOn of the boxes was frequently altered. The question to 

 be decided was now if bees are capable of perceiving the scent and secondly if they 

 realize the correlation between scent and food. For this purpose after the training 

 process just described, all the boxes were removed and replaced by four new ones 

 which had not been used. One Of these contained the scent. Hereupon the bees 

 were counted which entered each box. 



The experiment proved that the bees sought for the accustomed food in the scentet 

 boxes even when it was absent. In order to determine if bees are capable of finding 

 out a certain scent amongst various other ones, they were provided with food for some 

 time in boxes scented with the odour of acacias. Hereupon the training boxes were 

 substituted by others which had hitherto not been used and of which one was filled 

 with the aroma of acacia, one with that of roses, and one with lavender scent, whereas 

 the fourth box remained umscented. The result was that the bees all congregated in 

 the box scented with acacia-aroma. 



These and similar experiments proved that bees are capable of making a fine 

 distinction between various odours. 



The author further tried to determine if colours or scents were more observed by 

 bees when both factors competed with each other. For this purpose, he employed a 

 little box painted blue in front and filled with scent and sugar water, and another one 

 painted yellow which, however, remained empty. He then trained the bees to visit 

 the blue, scented box. After this, both boxes, were removed and replaced by an 

 unscented blue one and a yellow one filled with scent. The bees showed no marked 

 preference for either box, but visited both after some hesitation. Only quite at the 

 beginning of the experiment was a marked preference observable, as apparently the 

 bees were able to distinguish colours at a much greater distance than scents, as they 

 flew straight to the blue box from a distance of several meters and only became 

 perplexed, when quite near to it, because they then noticed the absence of the 

 accustomed odour. In spite of the fact, therefore, that the behaviour of the bees 

 varies with different scents and that the direction of the wind is not without effect 

 in this matter, evidently both scent and colour have a combined effect. 



It is especially remarkable that bees can also be trained to frequent disagreeable 

 odours, as for instauce that of lysol, as soon as they perceive that the latter is identical 

 with a source of nourishment. 



In a paper, entitled "Volatile oils from lichens" Schelenz 1 ) refers to the already 

 known distillates of Cladonia rangiferina and of other eryptogamous plants, without, 

 however, adducing any new facts, so that it is sufficient just to point out this publication. 



Occurrence of anemonine in Caltha palustris. — Anemonine which is found in some 

 species of Ranunculacece, also occurs, according to E. Poulsson 2 ), in the marsh-marigold 

 (Caltha palustris, L., N. 0. Ranunculacece). He worked up considerable quantities of 



l ) Pharm. ZentralU. 58 (1917), 59. — a ) Comp. Report April 1915, 79. 



