A WORD ABOUT WASPS. 267 
things. Isat quite near the nest, but found no attempt by the 
wasps to get on familiar terms with me. A like experience 
awaited me when sitting in a field on Smith’s Farm at Crossford. 
Here I was approached by only one wasp, which clung for an 
instant to the limb of my easel. But at each of the patches of 
long grass left uncropped by the cows there were many wasps, 
attracted by the smell of cow-dung, and the food they found 
there. Round about the rank grass, too, where wild flowers were 
growing, plenty of wasps were to be seen from time to time 
sallying out from the shadow to visit the honey-glands, and sip 
their sweets. But in all such places wasps are shy, as if they 
wanted none of our company, or had not learned that some good 
is at times to be had from us. : 
Although bees, butterflies, and moths have come in for far more 
attention than wasps, great observers do not leave us without 
testimony in favour of the wasp as an agent in plant-fertilization. 
Mr. Darwin was of opinion that Lpipactis latifolia, Sw., was so 
dependent on wasps that the disappearance of the insect would 
cause the extinction of this orchid; and he quotes the authority 
of Mr. Oxenden as to the attendance of wasps upon Z. purpurata, 
Sm. Dr. Miiller says that a considerable number of flowers 
depend entirely on wasps for pollination, and that such are seldom 
pretty and never sweet-scented, but attract the wasps by meat-like 
odours. Sir John Lubbock mentions that Scrophularia nodosa, L., 
_ is much frequented and fertilized by wasps. Mr. Grant Allen 
states that wasps are principally drawn to flowers by heavy and 
fetid odours. From all evidence, it is clear that the wasp is 
largely guided by smell, and that its choice is none of the sweetest. 
But perhaps its love for what we call bad smells determines its 
best sphere of usefulness. Not only the flowers, but often the 
habitats, supply this attraction. The wet rubbish heap, the emptying 
drain, the oozing cesspool, are evils that cry aloud for redress, and 
their cries are all the louder till vegetation comes to clothe them. 
On sewage-laden river banks the herbage covers much that is 
unsightly, and lessens the effects of the hurtful odours. If it is 
better to have such places clothed with a mantle of green, and if 
we know that the wasp is a willing worker among the flowers 
that graciously cover places so uninviting, we cannot well fix a 
limit to the work it is doing, both openly and out of sight. 
