THE PINE WOOD 



THERE was a humming in the tops of the young pines 

 as if a swarm of bees were busy at the green cones. 

 They were not visible through the thick needles, and 

 on listening longer it seemed as if the sound was not 

 exactly the note of the bee a slightly different pitch, 

 and the hum was different, while bees have a habit 

 of working close together. Where there is one bee 

 there are usually five or six, and the hum is that of 

 a group ; here there only appeared one or two insects 

 to a pine. Nor was the buzz like that of the humble- 

 bee, for every now and then one came along low down, 

 flying between the stems, and his note was much 

 deeper. By-and-by, crossing to the edge of the 

 plantation, where the boughs could be examined, 

 being within reach, I found it was wasps. A yellow 

 wasp wandered over the blue-green needles till he 

 found a pair with a drop of liquid like dew between 

 them. There he fastened himself and sucked at it; 

 you could see the drop gradually drying up till it was 

 gone. The largest of these drops were generally 

 between two needles those of the Scotch fir or pine 

 grow in pairs but there were smaller drops on the 

 outside of other needles. In searching for this exuding 

 turpentine the wasps filled the whole plantation with 

 the sound of their wings. There must have been 

 many thousands of them. They caused no inconveni- 

 ence to any one walking in the copse, because they 

 were high overhead. 



