552 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 
process is so little connected with that of building, that though it takes 
place in some combs in three or four days, it does not in others for several 
months, though both are equally employed for the same uses.! Huber 
ascertained by accurate experiments that this tinge is not owing to the heat 
of the hives ; to any vapours in the air which they include; to any emana- 
tious from the wax or honey ; nor to the deposition of this last in the cells; 
but he inclines to think it is occasioned by a yellow matter which the bees 
seem to detach from their mandibles, and to apply to the surface which 
erste varnishing, by repeated strokes of these organs and of the fore- 
eet. 
In their out-of-door operations several distinct instincts are concerned. 
By one they are led to extract honey from the nectaries of flowers ; by 
another to collect pollen after a process involving very complicated mani- 
pulations, and requiring a singular apparatus of brushes and baskets ; and 
that must surely be considered a third which so remarkably and bene- 
ficially restricts each gathering to the same plant. It is clearly a distinct 
instinct which inspires bees with such dread of rain, that even if a loud 
pass before the sun, they return to the hive in the greatest haste *; and 
that seems to me not less so, which teaches them to find their way back 
to their home after the most distant and intricate wanderings. When bees 
have found the direction in which their hive lies, Huber says they fly to it 
with an extreme rapidity, and as straight as a ball from a musket *, and if 
their hives were always in open situations, one might suppose, as Huber 
seems inclined to think, that it is by their sight they are condacted to 
them. But hives are frequently found in small gardens embowered in 
wood, and in the midst of villages surrounded and interspersed vith trees 
and buildings, so as to make it impossible that they can be sen from a 
distance. If you had been with me in 1815, in the famous Pays de Waes 
in Flanders, where the country is a perfect flat, and the inwbitants so 
enamoured either of the beauty or profit of trees that their felds, which 
are rarely above three acres in extent, are constantly surrouyded 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 eyesig}t for retrac- 
ing the road homeward. In vain, during my stay at St. Nichplas, I sallied 
out at every outlet to try to gain some idea of the extent ani form of the 
town. Trees — trees — trees — still met me, and interceptd the view in 
every direction; and I defy any inhabitant bee of this rwal metropolis, 
after once quitting its hive, ever to gain a glimpse of it agan until nearly 
perpendicularly 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 bills or of fishes, 
or domestic quadrupeds to find out their homes from injonceivable dis- 
tances.’ When they have reached the hive, another instint leads them to 
1 Huber, ii. 274. ® Tbid. ii/275. 
5 Thid. i. 856. # Ibid. ii/ 367. 
5 The following striking anecdote of this last species of instind, in an animal not 
famed for sagacity, was related to me by Lieutenant (now Lieu ae Alderson 
ae Engineers), who was personally acquainted with the facts. —1n March, 
1816, an ass, the property of Captain Dundas, R. N., then at Mata, was shipped on 
board the Ister frigate, Captain Forrest, bound from Gibraltar fir 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 
