Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/49

  or coronetted eyes, arranged triangularly on its centre, between the antennæ. That these little specks are, in reality, organs of vision, has been made apparent from accurate experiments, in which, when the reticulated eyes were blindfolded, the insect was evidently not deprived of sight, though the direction of its flight, being vertical, seemed to prove that the stemmata were adapted only or chiefly to upward vision. This additional organ must, doubtless, add considerably to its power of sight, though, probably, its aid may be confined chiefly to the obscure recesses of the hive. As the internal operations of the insect in the honey season are carried on during the night as well as the day, the coronet-eyes may, as Reaumur conjectures, serve to it the purpose of a microscope. As to the general power of vision in the Bee, its organs appear better adapted to distant objects than to such as are close at hand. When returning loaded from the fields, it flies with unerring certainty, and distinguishes at once its own domicile in the midst of a crowded apiary. Yet every person who has at all made this insect the subject of observation, must have seen it often at a loss, in returning to its hive to find the entrance, especially if its habitation has been shifted ever so little from its former station; nay, if, without moving the hive, the entrance has been turned round a single inch from its former position, the Bee flies with unerring precision to that point on the alighting board where the door formerly stood, and frequently, after many fruitless attempts to find the entrance, it is forced to rise again into the air, with a view, we