April, 1887.] history society of Wisconsin. 
121 
starting place and seemed unwilling to venture out again. They 
were still on the ground when we left the spot. 
Our experiments all serve to show that the two species of 
wasps with which we experimented have no sense of direc¬ 
tion in the form of a mysterious additional sense, nor yet in the 
form of a power by which they keep a register of the turns and 
changes in a journey and thus are able to retrace their way. 
Our cage was of wire, and so open that they could see all about 
as we carried them from place to place, yet when they flew out 
they most frequently started in a wrong direction and toward a 
point that we had not passed. In many instances, however, 
these wasps returned to the nest, and it seems highly probable 
that as they rose higher and higher into the air, circling as they 
rose, they discoveredsome high tree-top or other object that had 
before served them as a land-mark, and that in this way they 
were able to make their way home—unless, indeed, they had 
been taken so far away that the overlooked country presented no 
familiar object to their view. 
May not the action of the wasps experimented upon by Sir 
John Lubbock in always flying to the closed window that was 
in the “wasp-line” to its nest, have been due to the relative 
amount of light coming in at the two windows ? 
MEMORY. 
The facts related regarding the visits of the hoi net to the 
wasps pinned to a board prove a limited degree of memory, as 
Jo also the experiments on the color sense. Some other obser 
vations, however, that we have made show that wasps have a 
very good memory. We found a hornet’s nest suspended from 
the rafters of the upper room of the boat-house. In order to 
reach the nest the wasps passed in through a window, which in 
stead of moving up and down slid back and forth in a groove 
when opened and closed. When we first noticed them the win 
dow stood three-quarters open. This left about six nicies 
glass projecting into the space and opposing tlieir passage. 
When coming in, their line of flight was often toward the pro- 
jecting glass-but they never flew against it during the many 
