The Common Wasp 



homes. It consists of a water-bottle with an 

 opening at the bottom and standing on three 

 low supports. Inside, some soap-suds form 

 a ring-shaped lake around the orifice. A 

 lump of sugar, placed beneath the entrance, 

 acts as the bait. The Flies make for the 

 sugar. On leaving it, seeing the light above 

 them, they rise with a vertical flight and enter 

 the trap, where they wear themselves out, 

 beating their wings against the transparent 

 wall. All perish by drowning, because they 

 are incapable of the rudimentary notion of 

 going out by the way they came. 



Even so with the Wasps under my bell- 

 glass: they know how to get in, but do not 

 know how to get out. On ascending from 

 their burrow, they go to the light. Finding 

 broad daylight in their transparent prison, 

 they consider their aim accomplished. An 

 obstacle checks their flight, it is true; no 

 matter: the whole area is brightly lit up; 

 and this is enough to delude the prisoners, 

 who, despite the continual warning of their 

 collisions with the glass, endeavour, obsti- 

 nately and without attempting anything else, 

 to fly farther in the direction of the luminous 

 void. 



The Wasps returning from the fields are 

 in a different situation. They are passing 

 253 



