INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 565 
also ; and their historian may exclaim with the poet who has so well sung 
the pleasures of this faculty, 
“ Hail, Memory, hail ! thy universal reign 
Guards the least link of Being’s glorious chain,” 
In the elegant lines in which this couplet occurs}, which were pointed 
out to me by my friend Dr. Alderson of Hull, Mr. Rogers supposes the 
bee to be conducted to its hive by retracing the scents of the various flowers 
which it has visited; but this idea is more poetical than accurate, bees, 
as before observed, flying straight to their hives from great distances. Here, 
as I have more than once had occasion to remark in similar instances, we 
have to regret the want of more correct entomological information in the 
poet, who might have employed with as much effect, the real fact of bees 
distinguishing their own hives out of numbers near them, when conducted 
to the spot by instinct. This recognition of home seems clearly the result 
of memory; and it is remarkable that bees appear to recollect their own 
hive rather from its situation, than from any observations on the hive 
itself?: just as a man is guided to his house from his memory of its position 
relative to other buildings or objects, without its being necessary for him 
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 
enter it, without being struck by the change; and bees, if during their ab- 
sence their old hive be taken away, and a 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 
connection.® 
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 pre- 
i | “Wark | the bee winds her small but mellow horn, 
Blithe to salute the sunny smile of morn. 
O’er thymy downs she bends her busy course, 
And many a stream allures her to its source, 
*Tis noon, ’tis night. That eye so finely wrought, 
Beyond the search of sense, the soar of thought, 
Now vainly asks the scenes she left behind ; 
Its orb so full, its vision so confined | 
Who guides the patient pilgrim to her cell ? 
Who bids her soul with conscious triumph swell ? 
With conscious truth retrace the mazy clue 
Of varied scents that charm’d her as she flew? 
Hail, Memory, hail ! thy universal reign 
Guards the least link of Being’s glorious chain.” 
2 Ifa hive be removed out of its ordinary position, the first day after this re- 
moval the bees do not fly to a distance without having visited all the neighbouring 
once: The queen does the same thing when flying into the air for fecundation, 
(uber, Recherches sur les Fourmis, 100.) 
5 See the account of the mode in which the Favignanais increase the number of 
their hives by thus dividing them. (Huber, ii, 459.) 
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