502 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 
constantly surrounded with a double row, making the 
whole district one vast wood—you would have pitied the 
poor bees if reduced to depend on their own eye-sight 
for retracing the road homeward. In vain during my 
stay at St. Nicholas I sallied out at every outlet to try 
to gain some idea of the extent and form of the town. 
Trees—trees—trees—still met me, and intercepted the 
view in every direction; and I defy any inhabitant bee 
of this rural metropolis, after once quitting its hive, 
ever to gain a glimpse of it again until nearly perpendi- 
cularly over it. The bees, therefore, of the Pays de 
Waes, and consequently all other bees, must be led to 
their abodes by instinct, as certainly as it is instinct that 
directs the migrations of birds or of fishes, or domestic 
quadrupeds to find out their homes from inconceivable 
distances*.— When they have reached the hive, another 
instinct leads them to regurgitate into the extended pro- 
boscis of their hungry companions who have been occu- 
pied at home, a portion of the honey collected in the 
fields; and another directs them to unload their legs of 
the masses of pollen, and to store it in the cells for future 
use. 
+ The following striking anecdote of this last species of instinct in 
an animal not famed for sagacity, was related to me by Lieutenant 
Alderson, (royal engineers,) who was personally acquainted with the 
facts.—In March 1816 an ass, the property of Captain Dundas, R.N., 
then at Malta, was shipped on board the Ister frigate, Captain For- 
rest, bound from Gibraltar for that island, The vessel having struck 
on some sands off the Point de Gat, at some distance from the shore, 
the ass was thrown overboard to give it a chance of swimming to 
land—a poor one, for the sea was running so high that a boat which 
left the ship was lost. A few days afterwards, however, when the 
gates of Gibraltar were opened in the morning, the ass presented him- 
self for admittance, and proceeded to the stable of Mr. Weeks, a 
merchant, which he had formerly occupied, to the no small surprise 
