INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 523 
they had ascertained by trial that they could not reach 
the nectar from the top; but that having once ascertain- 
ed by experience that the flowers of beans are too strait 
to admit them, they then, without further attempts in the 
ordinary way, pierced the bottoms of ail the flowers 
which they wished to rifle of their sweets——M. Aubert 
du Petit-Thouars observed that humble-bees and Xylo- 
copa violacea gained access in a similar manner to the 
nectar of Antirrhinum Linaria and majus, and Mirabilis 
Jalappa; as do the common bees of the Isle of France 
to that of Canna indica*; and I have myself more than 
once noticed holes at the base of the long nectaries of 
Aquilegia vulgaris, which I attribute to the same agency. 
My second fact is supplied by the same ants, whose 
sagacious choice of the vicinity of Reaumur’s glass hives 
for their colony has been just related to you. He tells 
ius that of these ants, of which there were such swarms 
on the outside of the hive, not a single one was ever per- 
ceived within; and infers that, as they are such lovers of 
honey, and there was no difficulty in finding crevices to 
enter in at, they were kept without, solely from fear of 
the consequences °. - Whence arose this fear ? We have 
no ground for supposing ants endowed with any instinc- 
tive dread of bees; and Reaumur tells us, that when he 
happened to leave in his garden, hives of which the bees 
had died, the ants then never failed to enter them and 
regale themselves with the honey. It seems reasonable, 
therefore, to attribute it to experience. Some of the ants 
no doubt had tried to enter the peopled as they did the 
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@ Nouveau Bulletin des Sciences, i, 45. >» Reaum. v. 709. 
