32 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 



Cyclopean vision. Indeed, many writers 

 deny to them any serviceable function 

 whatever. They allow them a certain 

 sensitiveness to light, but that is all. 



If it is true, as seems probable, that 

 these three little eyes, or ocelli, are an 

 heirloom from Vespa's distant but very 

 important ancestor the worm, then we can 

 permit her to wear them merely as orna- 

 ments, or as glistening reminders of the 

 time when she was a plastic worm with the 

 glorious possibility of becoming a winged 

 and a stinged creature. 



But while one so readily accepts the 

 judgment of the scientists on the ocelli, it 

 is another matter when they declare the 

 compound eyes also to be very inferior 

 visual organs, able at the best to give but 

 an impression of light, of color, and of 

 moving objects. The compound eyes of 

 insects are a later development than the 

 ocelli ; they are complex in structure and 

 are always present, excepting where the 



