i88o.] 
Correspondence. 
34i 
CARNIVOROUS BEES. 
To the Editor of the journal of Science . 
S IR , — In the Notes (No. LXXV. of your issue) you have an 
interesting observation upon bees eating butterflies, and observe 
that Fritz Muller states that in South Brazil he saw “ bees licking 
the juice dropping from pieces of flesh which had been sus- 
pended to dry in the air.” In England I have observed both 
wasps and bees sipping the juices which have exuded from a 
fresh steak when lying in a plate. I always supposed they did 
so for the purposes of drink. Mr. Darwin may probably be 
right, that they tear open the bodies of the moths to get the 
nedtar contained in their stomachs. I think the more probable 
solution is, when we consider that they are not indifferent to the 
juice of meat, that the moisture, and not the nedfar, is the objedt 
of their quest. — I am, &c., 
S. B. 
FERTILITY OF HYBRIDS. 
To the Editor of the Journal of Science . 
Sir, — “ Truth-seeker ” might have found a more convincing 
proof of the fertility of hybrids than that he mentions from “the 
history of the American bison,” in the statement of Haeckel, 
that the progeny of the hare and the rabbit are fertile, and have 
been so for several generations ; he has named the new species 
Lepus Huxleyii. — I am, &c., 
S. B. 
[The hybrids which our correspondent mentions are well 
known in France as Leporides, and their fertility is established. 
But we fail to see that they furnish a more convincing proof than 
does the fertility of the hybrids between the American bison and 
the domestic cow. — E d. J. S.] 
