Before doing so, however, I made an experiment to test the
worth of the impression I had that the little insect found the way
back to the box by fixing telling points in its mind. While it was
away, I picked up the honey-box and set it on the stake a few rods
from the position it had thus far occupied, and stood there watching.
In a few minutes I saw the bee arrive at its guide-mark, the
overleaning branch on the tree-top, and thence came bouncing down
right to the spaces in the air which had been occupied by my head and
the honey-box, and when the cunning little honey-gleaner found nothing
there but empty air it whirled round and round as if confused and
lost; and although I was standing with the open honey-box within fifty
or sixty feet of the former feasting-spot, it could not, or at least
did not, find it.
Now that I had learned the general direction of the hive, I pushed on
in search of it. I had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile when I caught
another bee, which, after getting loaded, went through the same
performance of circling round and round the honey-box, buzzing in
front of me and staring me in the face to be able to recognize me; but
as if the adjacent trees and bushes were sufficiently well known, it
simply looked around at them and bolted off without much dressing,
indicating, I thought, that the distance to the hive was not great.
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