This I did on the sixth of September. I amputated both the antennae of a female which had been several months the subject of observation, and being of great fecundity had already laid a considerable number of workers eggs, and those of males. I put her into the same hive where the queen of the preceding experiment still remained, and she exhibited precisely the same marks of delirium and agitation, which I think it needless to repeat. I shall only add, that to judge better of the effect produced by privation of the antennae, on the industry and instinct of bees, I attentively considered the manner in which these two mutilated queens treated each other. You cannot have forgot, Sir, the animosity with which queens, possessing all their organs, combat, on which account it became extremely interesting to learn whether they would experience the same reciprocal aversion after losing their antennae. We studied these queens a long time; they met several times in their courses, and without exhibiting the smallest resentment. This last instance is, in my opinion, the most complete evidence of a change operated in their instinct. Another very remarkable circumstance, which this experiment gave me occasion to observe, consists in the good reception given by the bees to the stranger queen, while they still preserved the first. Having so often seen the symptoms of discontent that a plurality of queens occasions, after having witnessed the clusters formed around these supernumerary queens to confine them, I could not expect they would pay the same homage to a second mutilated one they still testified towards the first. Is it because after losing the antennae, these queens have no more any characteristic which distinguishes the one from the other? I was the more inclined to admit this conjecture from the bad reception of a third fertile queen preserving her antennae, which was introduced into the same hive. The bees seized, bit her, and confined her so closely, that she could hardly breath or move. Therefore, if they treat two females deprived of antennae in the same hive equally well, it is probably because they experience the same sensation from these two females, and want the means of longer distinguishing them from each other. From all this, I conclude, that the antennae are not a frivolous ornament to insects, but, according to all appearance, are the organs of touch or smell. Yet I cannot affirm which of these senses reside in them. It is not impossible that they are organised in such a manner as to fulfil both functions at once. As in the course of this experiment both mutilated females constantly endeavoured to escape from the hive, I wished to see what they would do if set at liberty, and whether the bees would accompany them in their flight. Therefore I removed the first and third queen from the hive, leaving the fertile mutilated one, and enlarged the entrance.