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 license, they are apt enough to mislead rather 

 than instruct. Yet 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 imperfect, 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 



* Dr. Evans. 



