BEES AND WASPS— SENSE OE DIRECTION. 149 
obstructed to a person looking from the new situation of the 
hive. 
Notwithstanding this change, the bees every day flew to the 
locality where they formerly lived, and continued flying around 
the site of what had been their home until, as night came on, 
they many of them sank upon the grass exhausted and chilled 
by the cold. Numbers, however, returned alive to their new 
position, after having looked in vain for their hive in its old 
place. At night I picked the exhausted bees up, and having 
restored warmth to them (by leaving them for a time on my 
coat-sleeve), I returned them to their companions. 
Here was an illustration that the faculty of memory was 
superior to that of observation ; but that was not all. Nearly 
every bee which I picked up during the 23 days through which 
this effort of memory lasted was an old one , as was easily de- 
duced from observing the worn edges of the wings ; showing 
that whilst the young insects were quick in receiving new im- 
pressions and in correcting errors, the nervous system of the 
old bees continued acting in the direction which early habit had 
effected. So true it is that ‘one touch of nature makes the 
whole world kin/ 
A closely similar observation has been told me by a 
friend, Mr. Greorge Turner. He found that when he 
removed a beehive only a yard or two from its accus- 
tomed site, the bees, on returning home, flew in swarms 
around the latter, and for a long time were unable to find 
the hive. And several other similar cases might be 
adduced. Lastly, Thompson says : — 
It is highly remarkable that they [bees] know their hive 
more from its locality than from its appearance, for if it be re- 
moved during their absence and a similar one be substituted, 
they enter the strange one. If the position of a hive be changed, 
the bees for the first day take no distant flight till they have 
thoroughly scrutinised every object in its neighbourhood. 1 
On the other hand, the writer of the article on 6 Bees ? 
in the 6 Encyclopaedia Britannica 5 says that in certain parts 
of France it is the habit of bee-keepers to place a number 
of hives upon a boat, which, in charge of a man, floats 
slowly down a river. The bees are thus continuously 
changing their pasture-ground, and yet do not lose their 
locomotive hives. 
1 Passions of Animals > p. 53. 
