INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



403 



little connected with that of building, that though it takes 

 place in some combs in three or four days, it does not in 

 others for several months, though both are equally employed 

 for the same uses. 1 Huber ascertained by accurate experi- 

 ment that this tinge is not owing to the heat of the hives ; to 

 any vapours in the air which they include ; to any emanations 

 from the wax or honey ; nor to the deposition of this last in 

 the cells ; but he inclines to think it is occasioned by a yellow 

 matter which the bees seem to detach from their mandibles, 

 and to apply to the surface which they are varnishing, by 

 repeated strokes of these organs and of the fore-feet. 2 



In their out-of-door operations several distinct instincts are 

 concerned. By one they are led to extract honey from the 

 nectaries of flowers ; by another to collect pollen after a pro- 

 cess involving very complicated manipulations, and requiring 

 a singular apparatus of brushes and baskets ; and that must 

 surely be considered a third which so remarkably and bene- 

 ficially restricts each gathering to the same plant. It is 

 clearly a distinct instinct which inspires bees with such dread 

 of rain, that even if a cloud pass before the sun, they return 

 to the hive in the greatest haste 3 ; and that seems to me not 

 less so, which teaches them to find their way back to their 

 home after the most distant and intricate wanderings. When 

 bees have found the direction in which their hive lies, Huber 

 says they fly to it with an extreme rapidity, and as straight as 

 a ball from a musket 4 ; and if their hives were always in 

 open situations, one might suppose, as Huber seems inclined 

 to think, that it is by their sight they are conducted to them. 

 But hives are frequently found in small gardens embowered 

 in wood, and in the midst of villages surrounded and inter- 

 spersed with trees and buildings, so as to make it impossible 

 that they can be seen from a distance. If you had been with 

 me in 1815, in the famous Pays de Waes in Flanders, where 

 the country is a perfect flat, and the inhabitants so enamoured 

 either of the beauty or profit of trees that their fields, which 

 are rarely above three acres in extent, are constantly sur~ 



i Huber, ii. 274. 2 Ibid. ii. 275. 



s Ibid. i. 356. 4 Ibid. ii. 367. 



B D 2 



