150 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 
It may be here worth while to add, parenthetically, as 
the only authentic observation with which I am acquainted 
concerning the distance that bees are accustomed to 
forage, the following statement of Prof. Hugh Blackburn. 
Writing from Glasgow University to 6 Nature ,’ 1 he says 
that bees are found in a certain peach-house every spring 
at the time of blossom, although, so far as he can ascer- 
tain, the beehives nearest to the peach-house in question 
are his own, and these are at a distance of ten miles. 
On the whole, then, and in the absence of further 
experiments, we must conclude it to be probable that the 
sense of direction with which hymenopterous insects are, 
as' shown by some of Sir John Lubbock’s experiments, un- 
questionably endowed, is of no small use to them in find- 
ing their way from home to food and vice versa ; although 
it appears certain, from other of his experiments, that 
this sense of direction is not in all cases a sufficient guide, 
and therefore requires to be supplemented by the definite 
observation of landmarks. 
But the most conclusive evidence on this latter point 
is afforded by a highly interesting observation of Mr. 
Bates on the sand-wasps at Santurem, which may here be 
suitably introduced, as the insects are not distantly allied. 
He describes these animals as always taking a few turns 
in the air round the hole they had made in the sand 
before leaving to seek for flies in the forest, apparently in 
order to mark well the position of the burrow, so that on 
their return they might find it without difficulty. This 
observation has been since confirmed in a striking manner 
by Mr. Belt, who found that the sand- wasp takes the most 
precise bearings of an object the position of which she 
desires to remember. This observation is so interesting 
that it deserves to be rendered in extenso : — 
A specimen of Polistes carnifex (i.e. the sand-wasp noticed 
by Mr. Bates) was hunting about for caterpillars in my garden. 
I found one about an inch long, and held it out towards it on 
the point of a stick. It seized it immediately, and commenced 
biting it from head to tail, soon reducing the soft body to a mass 
of pulp. It rolled up about one-half of it into a ball, and pro* 
1 Yol. xii. p. 68. 
