194 SIGHT OF BEES. 



or like the many servants by whom we are often worse waited 

 on than by a few. All that we can pronounce on with any 

 certainty is this that the gift of sight, as well as of every other 

 sense conferred on insects, is adequate to the exigences of their 

 nature : for the rest, the closest observers are much at variance. 

 The Bee, for instance, which is supposed by Huber to possess 

 the faculty of seeing in the greatest perfection, and, chiefly by 

 means of this surpassing vision, to be enabled to retrace its way 

 to its own hive, is yet denominated by one poet, " a dim-eyed 

 creature," while another, with reference to the eye, writes of 



" Its orb so full, its vision so confined." 



Poets, it is true, are not always the best authorities on points 

 of Natural History, on which often over-stepping the fair bounds 

 of poetic licence, they are apt enough to mislead rather than 

 instruct. Yrt as regards this matter of the sight of Bees, the 

 poets above cited are in no want of scientific opinions, at least as 

 many on their side as on the opposite. Wildman, and Drs. Bevan 

 and Evans, all consider the sight of the Bee as somewhat imper- 

 fect, and more adapted for distant vision than for near, enabling 

 them indeed to fly " straight homewards through the trackless 

 air as if in full view of their hive, but then, permitting them to 

 run their heads against it, seeming to feel their way to the 

 door with their antennae, as if totally blind/'* And yet 

 again, according to Reaumur, they ought to be no such 

 gropers ; because, as his experiments would seem to ; prove 



* Dr. Evans. 



