The +Eye-Sight+ of bees, notwithstanding the wonderful mechanism of their eyes, seems less perfect than their other senses: on some occasions it scarcely serves them to distinguish the entrance of their hives, when they come home loaded with provision. +Wildman+ says that he has observed them go up and down, seeking the door of the hive, and be obliged after alighting to rise again in order to find it: he conceived that they see better when flying than when on foot. I believe, however, that this opinion of +Wildman+ will not, upon examination, be found quite correct. The mere act of flying does not enable them to see objects better; but when on the wing, they are at a greater distance from those objects, the eyes of these insects being so constructed as to enable them to see best at a moderate distance. As +Dr. Evans+ has justly remarked, therefore, "the poet's disdainful allusion to a Fly whose feeble ray scarce spreads An inch around---- should here be exactly reversed." +Dr. Derham+ in his Physico-theology has observed, when speaking of the eye of the bee and other insects, that "the cornea and optic nerves, being always at one and the same distance, are fitted only to see distantial objects, but not such as are very nigh." This visual orb, this seemingly simple speck, though really complicated piece of mechanism, says +Derham+, "will be found upon examination to form a curious lattice-work of several thousand hexagonal lenses, each having a separate optic nerve ministering to it, and therefore to be considered as a distinct eye[T]. +M. Leewenhoeck+, having properly prepared and placed an eye of this kind betwixt his microscope and a church steeple (299 feet high and 750 distant), saw plainly the steeple inverted, through every different lens, though each lens was not larger than a needle's point. Yet, doubtless the insect perceives but a single object, and that in an upright position. The hemispheric arrangement of these lenses enables the bee to see accurately in every direction, and without any interval of time or trouble." [Footnote T: The multitude of hexagonal lenses which compose the eye of a bee, make it appear, when viewed through a microscope, exactly like honey-comb.] "Not huge Behemoth, not the Whale's vast form. That spouts a torrent, and that breathes a storm. Transcends in organs apt this puny fly, Her fine-strung feelers, and her glanceful eye, Set with ten thousand lenses." +Evans.+