404 



INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



rounded with a double row, making the whole district one 

 vast wood, you would have pitied the poor bees if reduced to 

 depend on their own eyesight for retracing the road home- 

 ward. In vain, during my stay at St. Nicholas, I sallied out 

 at every outlet to try to gain some idea of the extent and 

 form of the town. Trees — trees — trees — still met me, and 

 intercepted the view in every direction ; and I defy any in- 

 habitant bee of this rural metropolis, after once quitting its 

 hive, ever to gain a glimpse of it again until nearly perpendi- 

 cularly over it. The bees, therefore, of the Pays de Waes, 

 and consequently all other bees, must be led to their abodes 

 by instinct, as certainly as it is instinct that directs the mi- 

 grations of birds or of fishes, or domestic quadrupeds to find 

 out their homes from inconceivable distances. 1 When they 

 have reached the hive, another instinct leads them to regur- 

 gitate into the extended proboscis of their hungry companions 

 who have been occupied at home a portion of the honey col- 

 lected in the fields ; and another directs them to unload their 

 legs of the masses of pollen, and to store it in the cells for future 

 use. 



Several distinct instincts, again, are called into action in 

 the important business of feeding the young brood. One 

 teaches them to swallow pollen, not to satisfy the calls of 



1 The following striking anecdote of this last species of instinct, in an animal 

 not famed for sagacity, was related to me by Lieutenant (now Lieut. -Colonel) 

 Alderson (Royal Engineers), who was personally acquainted with the facts. — In 

 March, 1816, an ass, the property of Captain Dundas, R. N., then at Malta, 

 was shipped on board the Ister frigate, Captain Forrest, bound from Gibraltar 

 for that island. The vessel having struck on some sands off the Point de Gat, 

 at some distance from the shore, the ass was thrown overboard to give it a chance 

 of swimming to land — a poor one, for the sea was running so high that a boat 

 which left the ship was lost. A few days afterwards, however, when the gates 

 of Gibraltar were opened in the morning, the ass presented himself for ad- 

 mittance, and proceeded to the stable of Mr. Weeks, a merchant, which he had 

 formerly occupied, to the no small surprise of this gentleman, who imagined 

 that from some accident the animal had never been shipped on board the Ister. 

 On the return of this vessel to repair the mystery was explained ; and it turned 

 out that Valiante (so the ass was called) had not only swam safely to shore, but, 

 without guide, compass, or travelling map, had found his way from Point de 

 Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles, which he had 

 never traversed before, through a mountainous and intricate country, intersected 

 by streams, and in so short a period that he could not have made one false turn. 

 His not having been stopped on the road was attributed to the circumstance of 

 his having been formerly used to whip criminals upon, which was indicated to 

 the peasants, who have a superstitious horror of such asses, by the holes in his 

 ears, to which the persons flogged were tied. 



