In vain, during my stay at St. Nicholas, I sallied out at every outlet to try to gain some idea of the extent and form of the town. Trees, trees, trees, still met me, and intercepted the view in every direction; and I defy any inhabitant bee of this rural metropolis, after once quitting its hive, ever to gain a glimpse of it again until nearly perpendicularly over it. The bees, therefore, . . . must be led to their abodes by instinct, &c. The observation, however, is not so conclusive as its authors suppose; for there is nothing to show that the bees did not take note of particular objects on their accustomed routes, and so learn these routes by stages. It would be worth while in this connection to try the effect of hooding the eyes of a bee, or, if this were deemed too disturbing an experiment, removing the hive bodily to a distance from its accustomed site, and observing whether the bees start away boldly as before for long flights, or learn their new routes by stages. In this connection I may quote the following. Mr. John Topham, of Marlborough House, Torquay, writing to 'Nature,'[46] says:-- On October 29, 1873, I removed a hive of bees in my garden, after it was quite dark, for a distance of 12 yards from the place in which it had stood for several months; and between its original situation and the new one there was a bushy evergreen tree, so that all sight of its former place was 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 deduced from observing the worn edges of the wings; showing that whilst the young insects were quick in receiving new impressions 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.'