SOME REMARKABLE HABITS IN BEES. 167 
nature, however simple, especially on the animals and plants of 
our own country, will, if there is anything new or interesting 
about them, always be gladly received. Our other contributors 
will excuse us if we mention the paper by Miss Agnes Fry in the 
last number, as an example of how much may be learnt from 
the careful observation of a very common object. There is 
ample proof that there are among our readers a large number 
who have taken their position on different sides of this inter- 
minable evolutionist controversy. We shall always be pleased 
to have any notes from members of either party as to observa- 
tions from nature of what they consider is favourable to their 
theory. Professor Henslow’s communications, dealing with the 
commonest British wild flowers, and taking their behaviour under 
different circumstances as arguments for his hypothesis, seemed 
exactly to carry out these requirements. To his first article 
was appended a note, saying that “ articles on the other side, 
written with equal knowledge and a similar absence of the polemical 
spiritR would be willingly inserted. We asked for, and would 
be very glad to receive, an article dealing with the new point 
raised in Professor Henslow’s last paper, viz., the survival of the 
dwarf willows, considered from the point of view of his theory 
of environment, since it certainly seems to need some reply 
from those who have so repeatedly relied upon those very plants 
as valuable arguments against evolution. — Ed. N. N.f : 
CERTAIN REMARKABLE HABITS IN BEES. 
MONG animals of the highest types of organisation, we 
have long been accustomed to facts which seem dis- 
tinctly to point to processes of reasoning. Elephants, 
horses and dogs have furnished abundant evidence of 
conscious adaptation of means to ends, and naturalists have 
been quite ready to grant to these animals the possession of 
powers of mind beyond what is ordinarily included in the term 
* Since the above was written we have received a communication from Pro- 
fessor Ilenslow, who is quite willing to forego any discussion of the main principle 
of evolution, but wishes to point out, with regard to the portions of Mr. Morris’s 
paper which have some direct bearing on his own article, that : — 
“(1) The collection of quotations given by Mr. Morris from the writings of 
Mr. Darwin and those of Professor Henslow, showing how often probability 
instead of posiliveness is asserted by them, is a conclusive proof of the entire 
absence of ‘ dogma ’ in their widely differing theories. 
“ (2) When Mr. Morris says that a certain statement is ‘mere assertion and 
begs the whole question,’ he entirely forgets the numerous arguments which have 
been brought forward in support of it. 
“ (3) In answer to Mr. Morris’s question ‘How as to fertility ? ’ it will interest 
him to know that innumerable hybrids and subsequent crosses between natural 
species are quite as fertile, sometimes more so, than the original species.” 
