easy to study the properties of the vision of bees because they are attracted to honey, and we can make experiments in which we identify the honey by putting it on blue aper or red paper, and see which one they come to. By this method some very interesting things have been discovered about the vision of the bee In the first place, in trying to measure how acutely bees could see the color difference between two pieces of"white "paper, some researchers found they were not very good, and others found they were fantastically good. Even if the two pieces of white paper were almost exactly the same, the bees could still tell the difference.The experimenters used zinc white for one piece of paper and lead d although these look exactly the same the bee could easily distinguish them, because they reflect a different amount in the ultraviolet In this way it was discovered that the bee is sensitive over a wider range of the spectrum than is our own. Our eye works from 7000 angstroms to 4000 ang stroms, from red to violet, but the bee's can see down to 3000 angstroms into the ultraviolet! This makes for a number of different interesting effects. In the first place, bees can distinguish between many flowers which to us look alike. Of course, we must realize that the colors of flowers are not designed for our eyes, but for the bee; they are signals to attract the bees to a specific flower. We all know that there are many"white"flowers. Apparently white is not very interesting to the bees, because it turns out that all of the white flowers have different proportions of reflection in the ultraviolet; they do not reflect one hundred percent of the ultra- violet as would a true white. All the light is not coming back, the ultraviolet is missing, and that is a color, just as, for us, if the blue is missing, it comes out ellow. So all the flowers are colored for the bees. However, we also know that red cannot be seen by bees. Thus we might expect that all red flowers should look black to the bee. Not so! A careful study of red flowers shows, first, that even with our own eye we can see that a great majority of red flowers have a bluish tinge be cause they are mainly reflecting an additional amount in the blue, which is the part that the bee sees. Furthermore, experiments also show that flowers vary in their reflection of the ultraviolet over different parts of the petals, and so on. So if w could see the flowers as bees see them they would be even more beautiful and varied It has been shown, however that there are a few red flowers which do not re- fect in the blue or in the ultraviolet, and would, therefore, appear black to the bee! This was of quite some concern to the people who worry about this matter, because black does not seem like an interesting color, since it is hard to tell from a dirty old shadow. It actually turned out that these flowers were not visited by bees, these are the flowers that are visited by hummingbirds, and hummingbirds can see the red! Another interesting aspect of the vision of the bee is that bees can apparently tell the direction of the sun by looking at a patch of blue sky, without seeing the sun itself. We cannot easily do this. If we look out the window at the sky and see that it is blue, in which direction is the sun? The bee can tell, because the bee is quite sensitive to the polarization of light, and the scattered light of the sky is polarized, There is still some debate about how this sensitivity operates. Whether it is because the reflections of the light are different in different circumstances, or the bee's eye is directly sensitive, is not yet known. t It is also said that the bee can notice flicker up to 200 oscillations per second while we see it only up to 20. The motions of bees in the hives are very quick the feet move and the wings vibrate, but it is very hard for us to see these motions with our eye. However, if we could see more rapidly we would be able to see the motion. It is probably very important to the bee that its eye has such a rapid response. w The human eye also has a slight sensitivity to the polarization of light, and one can learn to tell the direction of the sun The phenomenon that is involved here is called nger's brush: it is a faint yellowish hourglass-like pattern seen at the center of the field when one looks at a broad, featureless expanse using polarizing glasses. It can also be seen in the blue sky without polarizing glasses if one rotates his head back and forth about the axis of vision t evidence obtained since this lecture was given indicates that the eye is directly sensI 36-7