SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ON ANTS, BEES, AND WASPS. 135 



the Natural History Society of Wisconsin'* a very interestinj^f 

 paper on the special senses of wasps, and their conclusions concur 

 closely with mine. 



It appears from their observations that some wasps stay out 

 all night and return early in the morning before the others begin 

 coming out. For instance, on the 18th Aug. the first wasps left 

 the nest at 7.25 ; 10, however, had already returned, 3 of them 

 before 5 a.m. It appears from their observations that the 

 average time a wasp is absent from the nest, that is the average 

 length of each excursion, is 43 minutes. They observe that this 

 may appear inconsistent with my observations, when the trips 

 were shorter and more numerous, one of my wasps having paid 

 me 116 visits in 15 hours and a half. But, as they justly observe, 

 the cases are not comparable. My wasps and theirs were like 

 Jacob and Ishmael — mine haa everything ready prepared for 

 them, theirs had to hunt for themselves. 



As regards the sense of hearing, they repeated some of my 

 experiments with the same results. They seem to consider that 

 as regards the sense of colour their conclusions are somewhat 

 at variance with mine. 



As regards the supposed sense of direction they say f: — "Sir 

 John Lubbock, in dealing with the sense of direction in ants, con- 

 cluded, after a number of observations, that they were endowed 

 with this sense in a high degree. Subsequently he discovered, 

 quite accidentally, that the ants found their way by observing 

 the direction in which the light was falling." My conclusion 

 was, however, the result of many observations carried on under 

 varied conditions, and I should hardly call it an accident. 



They came to the conclusion, as I had done, that wasps have 

 no sense of direction, that is to say in the form of a mysterious 

 additional sense, but that, if they do not know where they are, they 

 rise higher and higher into the air, circling as they do so, until they 

 discover some high treetop or other object that had before served 

 them as a landmark, and that in this way they are able to make 

 their way home. This entirely tallies with my own conclusion. It 

 is interesting as showing that the vision of wasps must be good 

 for somewhat distant objects. 



They also found, as I had done, that their memory varied 

 greatly in different individuals. 



* April 1887. 



t Proc. Nat. Hist. Soc. Wisconsin, April 1887, p. 113. 



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