REVIEW—GLEANINGS IN NATURAL HISTORY, 283 
ordinary. I had a dog who was much attached to me, and who, 
in consequence of his having been tied up one Sunday morning 
to prevent his accompanying me to church, would conceal him¬ 
self in good time on that day; and I was sure to find him either 
at the entrance of the church, or, if he could get in, under the 
place where I usually sat. A gentleman, a good shot, lent a 
favourite old pointer to a friend who had not much to accuse 
himself of in the slaughter of partridges, however much he might 
have frightened them : after ineffectually firing at some birds 
which the old pointer had found for him, the dog turned away in 
apparent disgust, went home, and never could be persuaded to 
accompany the same person afterwards. I have often been 
much delighted with watching the manner in which some of 
the old bucks in Bushy Park contrive to get the berries from 
the fine thorn trees there: they will raise themselves on their 
hind legs, give a spring, entangle their horns in the lower 
branches of the tree, give them one or two shakes, w T hich makes 
some of the berries fall, and they will then quickly pick them up. 
The power which bees possess of ventilating their hives, and of 
producing such a temperature as will prevent the wax from 
melting in hot weather, is, I think, another proof that something 
more than mere instinct influences their conduct; as, in their 
natural state, bees are probably not in so confined a space as 
they are in our common straw hives, or exposed so much to the 
heat of the sun. In hot weather a number of bees (the number 
probably being regulated by the state ol the atmosphere) may 
be observed busily employed at the bottom of the hive moving 
their wings with so much rapidity, that the motion of them is 
almost imperceptible : if, while this action is going forward, 
a lighted candle should be held at an opening on the top of the 
hive, it will immediately be blown out; a fact which will enable 
you to form some idea of the current of air produced by these 
insects from the motion of their wings. I have, however, known 
instances in extreme hot weather, when all the labours of the 
bees to keep the hive in a proper temperature have failed, and a 
part of the wax was melted. In this case it is dangerous to go 
near the hive : the bees are in a state of extreme irritation; and 
though I fancy that mine know me, and receive me as a friend, 
and allow me sometimes to take liberties with them with im¬ 
punity, yet, at the time referred to, 1 have suffered from their 
stings in endeavouring to shelter them more effectually from the 
heat of the sun.” 
From the instances which we have given, the reader will be 
inclined to agree with the author, that some animals are endowed 
with a faculty which approaches very near to reason. There is 
no surer test of reason, than w hen, after having tried 011 c mode of 
