ZOOLOGY. 283 



surround a grain of wheat may represent its appearance ; but the piece 

 of chaff shows only a uniform glazed surface, whilst in the eye of the 

 bee, which is much darker in color, though alike externally glazed, the 

 brightness arises from the presence of about 3,500 small but perfectly 

 hexagonal lenses, fitting closely together, and disposed in regular rows 

 over the whole circumference. This structure, then, may be likened 

 to a bundle of 3,500 telescopes, so grouped that the large terminal len- 

 ses present an extensive convex surface, whilst, in consequence of the 

 decreasing diameter of the instruments, their narrow ends meet, and 

 form a smaller concentric curve. Could we look through all these tele- 

 scopes at one glance, and obtain a stereoscopic effect, we might be able 

 to form some conception of the operation of vision in this insect. 



Even one of these 3,500 lenses would occupy us long in a complete 

 examination of it. Each of the eyelets, which, when aggregated, con- 

 stitute the compound eye of the bee, is itself a perfect instrument of 

 vision, consisting of two remarkably formed lenses an outer corneal 

 and an inner conical lens. The corneal lens is a six-sided prism, and 

 the assemblage of these prisms forms the cornea of the compound eye. 

 If the whole or a portion of this cornea be peeled off, and placed under 

 a microscope, the beautiful grouping of the lenses becomes distinctly 

 visible. On a close and careful examination, the corneal lens of the 

 eyelet is perceived to be not a simple but a compound lens, composed 

 of two plano-convex lenses of different densities or refracting powers. 

 The plane surface of these lenses being adherent, it follows that the 

 prismatic corneal lens is a compound double convex lens, as was dis- 

 covered by Dr. Hicks. The effect of this arrangement is, that if there 

 should be any aberration or divergence of the rays of light during their 

 passage through ene portion of the lens, it is rectified in its transit 

 through the other. It is nothing very new to find lenses of different 

 densities in an animal's eye, but where is there another instance in 

 which one compound lens consists of two adherent lenses of this de- 

 scription ? 



Yet the wonder does not end here. Man has been unconsciously 

 groping his way in the formation of his most perfect microscopic lens to 

 an imitation of the bee's eye. His aim has been to correct the aberra- 

 tion of light, which caused his lenses to color and distort the objects 

 under investigation, and he attained this end by employing compound 

 lenses of varying densities. When, after long study, he obtained an 

 achromatic lens^ he had but equalled the little bee ; and how striking 

 the thought, that, by the use of his own achromatic lens, man first dis- 

 tinctly perceived that of the bee ! The little insect had used it for 

 thousands of years perhaps, before man trod the earth. By its wonder- 

 ful lenses and numerous facets, it gams light in the dim cups of flowers. 

 Into those floral hollows it carries, as it were, thousands of light collec- 

 tors and reflectors, capable of forming a single picture by the means of 

 a great number of smaller images. Into the "dark hive it bears the 

 same optical apparatus, and thereby economizes every particle of strag- 

 gling or slanting light. If bees, as one alleges, always work in the 

 darL, has not each one of them three or four thousand illuminators ? 

 And if we reflect upon the many thousands of these, all in optical op- 

 eration throughout the hive, how can it be said that these creatures 

 work in the dark ? The Hone'/ Bee ; its Natural History, Anatomy, 

 etc., by James Samuelson, and Dr. J. B. Hicks, London. 



