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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLV 



La couleur ecarlate s't'tait si bien associt'e dans leur souvenir a 

 Fidee du miel, qu'elles se passaient a la fin sur des fleurs de cette couleur 



A translation of his own words follows : "Scarlet color 

 and honey had become so closely associated in their 

 minds that they finally alighted upon flowers of the 

 same color which had received none, and would not leave 

 until they had assured themselves by a scrupulous and 

 persistent examination that these flowers had nothing to 

 offer them." Plateau gets precisely the same results 

 when he says : 



Lorsque l'insecte avait ainsi absorbe le liquide d'un certain nombre 

 defleurs miellees, il lui arrivait de se diriger vers les Pelargoniums non 



"After the insects had gathered honey from a number 

 of flowers to which it had been added, they were then 

 led to visit Pelargonium blossoms which had not re- 

 ceived it." These observations are hardly in agree- 

 ment with the rather radical conclusions of Bethe 6 that 

 bees are devoid of sense impressions, and are incapable 

 of profiting by previous experiences, that their activities 

 are purely reflex, mechanical. Forel, Wasman, Buttel- 

 Reepen, Huber and others have shown, nevertheless, 

 that bees do profit by previous experiences and form 

 habits under certain conditions. Lovell 7 has shown that 

 once bees have been accustomed to visiting a certain 

 color, they tend to return to it regularly until it is to 

 their advantage to change. Once the bees have entered 

 the cotton fields, it is quite obvious that they are led to 

 discover the blossoms by the conspicuous corolla. It 

 would be interesting to learn just how they find the fields 

 themselves. Although a single cotton blossom does not 



'Bulletin de I'Academie rcyale de Belgiqne, 3e serie, 33, January, 1897. 



•Bethe Albreeht, "Durfen wir Ameisen und Beinen psvchische Quali- 

 taten zusehrieben? » in Arch. f. d. ges. Physiologie, Bd. 70, 1898. 



T Lovell, John H., "The Color Sense of the Honey Bee: Can Bees Dis- 

 tinguish Colors!" Amer. Nat., Vol. XLIV, No. 527, November, 1910. 



