Page:The life of the bee (IA cu31924101469827).pdf/253

The Young Queens to bottom, during the workers' absence, they would still unhesitatingly direct their course to it from out the far depths of the horizon; and only when confronted by the unrecognisable threshold would they seem for one instant to pause. Such experiments as lie in our power point rather to their guiding themselves by an extraordinarily minute and precise appreciation of landmarks. It is not the hive that they seem to remember, but its position, calculated to the minutest fraction, in its relation to neighbouring objects. And so marvellous is this appreciation, so mathematically certain, so profoundly inscribed in their memory, that if, after five months' hibernation in some obscure cellar, the hive, when replaced on the platform, should be set a little to right or to left of its former position, all the workers, on their return from the earliest flowers, will infallibly steer their direct and unwavering 241