Xatural History of the Honeybee. •> 



comprehending under it everything acquired in the life of an individual, and also every 

 capacity for sensation and learning; in short, everything that transcends unperceived reflex 

 activity. 11 He considers ants and bees as mere reflex; machines: "It seems to me that 

 these insects have no senses, have no ability to make experiences and modify by it their 

 actions; that all stimuli remain below the threshold of perceptible sensations and percep- 

 tions, and that they execute, in a purely mechanical way, all the apparently reasoned 

 actions " (Bethe, 1. c, p. 98). Whether this view is warranted, we shall see further on. 



The terms " reflex " and "instinct, 7 ' I shall use in the significance Bethe gives to the 

 word ' ' reflex. ' ' Instinct is complicated reflex. 12 He lets pass as reflex the inherent faculties ; 

 the course of nervous processes is determined by inherited instincts. That acquired in the 

 life of the individual shows the opposite; here the course of the nervous processes indicates 

 experience, memory, learning, capability for association, etc. 13 I shall restrict myself here 

 to these short statements, but shall add some psychological views in the concluding chapter. 



I shall first discuss the "Hive Odor" and reactions resulting from it, then give my 

 experiments and opinions on the capacity for intelligence in bees, and end with my con- 

 clusions concerning the homing instinct in bees, or the ability to find the hive, etc. 



13 Bethe drops this expression in '-Beer, Bethe, und J. v. Uexkull, Vorschlage zu einer objectivirenden 

 Nomenklatur. Biol. Centralbl., 19 Bd., 1899, Nr. 15, p. 517 (also in Centralblatt fur Physiologie, 1899, 

 Nr. 6) ; and further in Bethe's " Noch einmal uber die psyehischen Qualitaten der Ameisen," Arehiv. f. d. 

 ges. Physiologie, Bd. 79, 1900, p. 45. 



12 H. E. Ziegler, Ueber den Begriff des Instinkts. Verhandl. d. deutsch. zoolog. Gesellsch., 1892. 



- 3 H. E. Ziegler, Theoretisches zur Tierpsvchologie und vergleichenden Neurophysiologie. Biol. Centralbl., 

 Bd. XX., Nr. 1, 1900. 



