The Life of the Bee 
times. They hover aloft in the air, their 
head persistently turned to the home; they 
describe great soaring circles that suddenly 
sink beneath the weight of regret; and 
their thirteen thousand eyes will question, 
reflect, and retain the trees and the fountain, 
the gate and the walls, the neighbouring 
windows and houses, till at last the aerial 
course whereon their return shall glide 
have become as indelibly stamped in their 
memory as though it were marked in space 
by two lines of steel. 
68 
A new mystery confronts us here which 
we shall do well to challenge; for though it 
reply not, its silence still will extend the 
field of our conscious ignorance, which is 
the most fertile of all that our activity 
knows. How do the bees contrive to find 
their way back to the hive which they cannot 
possibly see, which is hidden, perhaps, by the 
trees, and in any event must form an im- 
perceptible point in space? How is it 
that, if taken in a box to a spot two or 
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