28 EYE SPY 
more so, indeed, because these latter are strangers 
in a strange land, and divorced from their or- 
dained insect affinities. The plebeian daisy now 
becomes a marvel of a flower indeed five hun- 
dred wonderful little mechanisms packed together 
in a single golden disk. The red clover refuses 
to recognize us now unless properly introduced 
by that " burly bumblebee " with which its life is 
so strangely linked. 
The barn -yard weeds need no longer be con- 
sidered uninteresting and commonplace, because 
their mysteries have not yet been discovered, and 
I can do no better in my present chapter than 
to select one of their number and redeem it 
from its hitherto lowly place among them one 
of the homeliest of them all, and whose blos- 
soms are scarce noticed by any one except a 
botanist. 
In my initial illustration is shown a sketch 
of the Figwort, or scrophularia, a tall, spindling 
weed, with rather fine, luxuriant leaves, it is true, 
but with a tall, curiously branching spray of small, 
insignificant purplish-olive flowers, with not even 
a perfume, like the mignonette, to atone for its 
plainness. But it has an odor if not a perfume, 
and it has a nectary which secretes the beads of 
sweets for its pet companion insects, which in this 
instance do not happen to be bees or butterflies, 
but most generally wasps of various kinds, as 
