No. 510] COLOR SENSE OF THE HONEY-BEE 341 



the honey-bee, the second thirteen visits. The location of 

 my apiary not far away furnished a large and continuous 

 supply of visitors. The rotate corollas, together with the 

 cone of black anthers, the stamens being attached to the 

 base of the petals, were now removed from the five flowers 

 of the first group. There remained the green calyx, the 

 pistil, and the green disc surrounding it which secretes 

 the nectar. The two groups were now observed for a 

 second ten minutes, the first received no visits, the second 

 seven visits from the domestic bee as previously. Once 

 a bee hovered around the denuded flowers of the first 

 group but failed to alight. The much smaller number of 

 visits made to group number two during the second in- 

 terval may in part have been due to the less conspicuous- 

 ness of the whole patch of flowers. There were scattered 

 upon the ground many partially withered corollas and 

 twice a bee was seen to fly down toward them. With a 

 lens of twenty diameters I examined three of the de- 

 foliated blossoms and in two of them found eight or nine 

 small drops of nectar, so that had a bee alighted upon 

 them it would have been richly rewarded for its discern- 

 ment. The flowers possessed no perceptible odor. Three 

 points in the second part of this experiment should be 

 carefully noted; first, that the flowers from which the 

 corollas had been removed, though they contained an 

 abundance of nectar, received no visits; second, that the 

 flowers left complete received a much less number of 

 visits than during the first interval; third, that the bees 

 were attracted by the wilting corollas lying upon the 

 ground. 



On August 14, I made the following experiment upon a 

 staminate flower of the garden squash, Cacurhita maxima. 

 The weather was clear and warm. During an observation 

 of ten minutes it received twelve visits, eight of which 

 were made by honey-bees and four by workers of Bomhus 

 terricola Kirby. The perianth was then removed close 

 to the cup-shaped reservoir, but the denuded flower with 

 its prominent club of stamens and yellowish disc was still 



