December, 1909.] 



525 



Apiculture. 



but the bee always showed its ability to 

 distinguish between different colours. 

 Only one bee should be employed, for if 

 there are two or three they will conflict 

 and to some extent produce confusion. 



Lubbock also endeavoured to show 

 that blue is the favourite colour of the 

 honey-bee ; but his results are unsatis- 

 factory, and his method of exposition is 

 obscure, and does not give sufficient 

 details. Says Cowan in his book on the 

 honey-bee, "The Experiments of Sir 

 John Lubbock are not at all conclusive 

 that bees have a preference for any 

 particular colour." On the other hand, 

 Hermann Muller, who was the greatest 

 authority the world has ever produced 

 on the mutual relations of insects and 

 flowers, declared, after innumerable 

 observations, that blue is more agreeable 

 to the honey bee than any other colour. 

 In his experiments he used flower-petals 

 of differeut colours placed under grass 

 slides, and he arranged the different 

 colours in the following series according 

 to the preference of the honey-bee : 

 violet, blue, red, white, pale yellow, 

 pure green, glaring red, and glaring 

 yellow. Within the past ten years, 

 however, Prof. Felix Plateau, of the 

 University of Ghent, Belgium, has 

 published many papers, in which he 

 asserts that Muller was mislead by a too 

 vivid imagination. 



Now, does the honey-bee prefer blue to 

 every other colour or not ? Is Muller or 

 Plateau right ? During the past summer, 

 for the purpose of answering these 

 questions, I made many experiments with 

 slips of coloured paper and with floral 

 leaves, but the results were inconclusive. 

 Apparently there is no doubt that 

 a person dressed in black will receive a 

 greater number of stings than on6 wear- 

 ing white clothing. Do the bees see the 

 black more readily than the white ? or 

 does black excite them in the same way 

 that red enrages the bull or the turkey- 

 gobbler '? Strictly speaking, of course, 

 neither black nor white is a colour. 



I am now devising some new experL 

 ments to be tried another season, in the 

 hope of deciding the matter one way or 

 the other. I should like to ask the many 

 readers of Gleanings two questions. 1. 

 Have you ever observed any evidence to 

 prove that the honey-bee prefers one 

 colour (as blue) to another ? 2. Can you 

 suggest an experiment that will help in 

 the solution of this problem ? In either 

 case will you kindly Avrite and give me 

 the benefit of your observations and 

 suggestions ? Let us remember that, in 

 the multitude of counsellors, there is 

 wisdom. 



Waldoboro, Maine. 



SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE. 



THE ORGANISMS OP THE SOIL. 



By E. H. L. Schwarz, a.r.c.s., f.o.s., 

 Rhodes University College, Grahams- 

 town, South Africa. 



(Prom the Science Progress, No. 13, 

 July, 1909.) 



To Liebig and the early investigators 

 of the soil, the processes of decomposi- 

 tion which obviously take place in it 

 were the results of purely chemical 

 action. But the more the soil was in- 

 vestigated, the more this explanation 

 became untenable. There was discover- 

 ed in it a teeming race of animals, as 

 well as of plants, of an order different 

 from those which live upon the outer sur- 

 face ; a race of minute organisms distin- 

 guished in essential characters from the 

 larger forms which had been thought to 

 be the only tenants of the globe- In 

 these dwarfs the living substance of 

 those which had their being in Archajan 

 times is alive to-day. Brought into 

 existence to destroy, to break up the 



rocks of the primitive earth, to pr.ey 

 upon everything that came within their 

 reach, many of them, when the earth 

 became peopled with the higher animals 

 and over-grown with the plants for 

 which their activities had prepared the 

 way, turned upon these usurpers and 

 sought their annihilation. These mi- 

 croscopic beings of the underground 

 world are the bacteria, moulds, fungi, 

 blue-green, alg£e, myxomycetes and the 

 host of dreaded germs which plague us, 

 our cattle and our crops. 



The main work of these organisms, 

 however, is not to cause disease in the 

 higher animals and plants. The soil is 

 no t primarily a medium on which to grow 

 trees and herbs, but is the domain in 

 which bacteria and other lovely forms 

 of life exert their activity, the higher 

 plants exist by virtue of these, just as 

 animals live by virtue of the herbage. 



The lower organisms which live in 

 the soil and belong to the vegetable 

 kingdom are usually divided into the 

 bacteria and true fungi, moulds, yeasts 



