Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/42

30 the wall. Here he had an opening made, and found hidden behind the plaster an open drain-pipe, old and foul, which had formerly been connected with a lavatory, and had been enclosed and forgotten during some alterations made on the building several years before.

The olfactory sense of insects has been credited with perhaps even more wonderful powers than those we have just been writing about. For instance, both Lubbock and Forel have shown that the extraordinary aptitude ants possess for finding their way back to their nest after their peregrinations in the mazy labyrinth of their world depends upon the sense of smell. On their return to the nest they follow the scent left by their own footsteps.

This “homing” instinct, or “orientation,” which is found in many species of insects and animals, has long been a matter of interest to scientific naturalists. The subject is, however, much too large for us to enter fully into on the present occasion.

Winged insects like bees and wasps manifest also the homing instinct. In their case the return to the nest or hive is effected probably altogether under the guidance of vision. This is what we should expect, as elevation in the air secures for these creatures a wide and unimpeded view of their world. Circumstances are obviously different in the case of ants and other creeping things, whose immediate outlook, like that of four-footed