Note IR — Chapter XI · ANIMAL ACTIVITIES: HABIT AND INSTINCT.

The experiments, both of Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Romanes, show that the homing instinct of bees is largely the result of individual observation. Taken to the seashore at no great distance from the hive, where the objects around them, however, were unfamiliar (since the seashore is not the place where flowers and nectar are to be found), the bees were nonplussed and lost their way. Similarly, the migration of birds "is now," according to Mr. Wallace, "well ascertained to be effected by means of vision, long flights being made on bright moonlight nights, when the birds fly very high, while on cloudy nights they fly low, and then often lose their way" ("Darwinism," p. 442). This, of course, does not explain the migratory instinct—the internal prompting to migrate—but it indicates that the carrying out of the migratory impulse is, in part at least, intelligent.