BEES DO THEIR WORK 347 



would scarcely find it necessary to put out ex- 

 pensive corollas and deck themselves in gaudy 

 colors if their signals were meant for creatures 

 having very acute vision. 



In point of fact, the complex multiple eye of 

 the insect, devoid of any such adaptive apparatus 

 for focusing as the lens of the mammalian eye, 

 does not suggest acuteness of vision, but rather 

 a more or less vague appreciation of large masses 

 of color. 



The recent experiments of Dr. Charles A. 

 Turner, of the St. Louis Academy of Science, 

 have, indeed, demonstrated that bees can disting- 

 uish between color patterns as well as between 

 different colors. But, although the tests of the 

 naturalist Plateau, which seemed to show that 

 insects are attracted solely by odor, are thus con- 

 troverted, it doubtless remains true that the sense 

 of smell — or some equivalent sense of a kind as 

 yet unanalyzed — is the chief guide in bringing 

 insects from a distance to the vicinity of flower 

 bed or fruit tree. 



Professor Loeb declares that the "chemical 

 irritability" of the insect, as excited by odorifer- 

 ous objects, is immeasurably superior to the sense 

 of smell of human beings, and possibly even finer 

 than that of the best bloodliound. Observation of 

 the honey gatherer making liis "bee line" from 



