108 TILLEES OF THE GEOUND CHAP. 



and, within them, they lay their eggs and die. The 

 eggs hatch into new wasps, which feed upon the 

 caprifig until they have exhausted the food it 

 contains. The new wasps must then in their turn 

 leave the caprifig and go forth to seek a home in 

 which they may lay their eggs. But the spring 

 caprifigs are full of pollen, therefore, when the 

 wasps emerge, they are covered with pollen. 



If the fig-grower takes these caprifigs before the 

 wasps have left them, and hangs them over a tree 

 containing edible figs, then the wasps, as they 

 emerge, find their way into the edible figs. They 

 cannot lay their eggs there, for the flower is not 

 arranged to suit them, but they blunder about 

 looking for a suitable place, and in this way they 

 fertilise the little flowers inside the fig. That is, 

 they do what the fig-grower wants them to do. 



Finding no convenient place for their eggs in 

 the edible figs, they come out of them again and 

 seek the caprifig trees, where they lay their eggs 

 in the summer caprifigs. In the autumn the 

 wasps leave these for the autumn figs, and in these 

 autumn figs they pass the winter, to begin the 

 whole process over again in the spring. From 

 the wasp's point of view, therefore, the visit to 

 the edible fig is merely a waste of time, because 

 the edible fig has lost, in cultivation, everything 

 that makes it useful to the wasp. But, as the 



