his flight. Ben beckoned to the spectators to stand farther back, in
order to give him a fair chance, and, just as he had done so, the
bee rose. After humming around the stump for an instant, away the
insect flew, taking a course almost at right angles to that in which
le Bourdon had expected to see it fly. It required half a minute for
him to recollect that this little creature had gone off in a line
nearly parallel to that which had been taken by the second of the
bees, which he had seen quit his original position. The line led
across the neighboring prairie, and any attempt to follow these bees
was hopeless.

But the second creature was also soon ready, and when it darted
away, le Bourdon, to his manifest delight, saw that it held its
flight toward the point of the swamp INTO, or OVER which two of his
first captives had gone. This settled the doubtful matter. Had the
hive of these bees been BEYOND that wood, the angle of intersection
would not have been there, but at the hive across the prairie. The
reader will understand that creatures which obey an instinct, or
such a reason as bees possess, would never make a curvature in their
flights without some strong motive for it. Thus, two bees taken from
flowers that stood half a mile apart would be certain not to cross
each other's tracks, in returning home, until they met at the common
hive: and wherever the intersecting angle in their respective
flights may be, there would that hive be also. As this repository of
sweets was the game le Bourdon had in view, it is easy to see how
much he was pleased when the direction taken by the last of his bees
gave him the necessary assurance that its home would certainly be
found in that very point of dense wood.