INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 527 
buildings or objects, without its being necessary for hin 
even to cast a look at it. If, after quitting my house in 
a morning, it were to be lifted out of its site in the street 
by enchantment, and replaced by another-with a similar 
entrance, I should probably, even in the day time, en- 
ter it, without being struck by the change; and bees, if 
during their absence their old hive be taken away, and 
2 similar one set in its place, enter this last, and if it be 
provided with brood comb contentedly take up their 
abode in it, never troubling themselves to inquire what 
has become of the identical habitation which they left in 
the morning, and with the inhabitants of which, if it be 
removed to fifty paces distance, they never resume their 
connexion ?. ; 
If, pursuing my illustration, you should object that no 
man would thus contentedly sit down in a new house 
without searching after the old one, you must bear in 
mind that I am not aiming to show that bees have as 
precise a memory as ours, but only that they are endow- 
ed with some portion of this faculty, which I think the 
above fact proves. . Should you view it in a different 
light, you will not deny the force of others that have al- 
ready been stated in the course of our correspondence : 
such as the mutual greetings of ants of the same society 
when brought together after a separation of four months? ; 
andthe return of a party of bees In spring to a window 
where in the preceding autumn they had regaled on ho- 
ney, though none of this substance had been again placed 
there“. 
4 See the account of the mode in which the Favignanais increase 
rani cornea a nae 
the number of their hives by thus dividing them. Huber, i, 459. 
*G 3 g 1 BND 
b See above, p. 66. © Ibid. p. 202. 
