500 COMMISSION OF ERROR. 



how they require training to find it. They require to learn 

 their way, just as a child or a man does. 



The bee is not the only insect liable to error, and we 

 hear so much of the uniformity of instinct in the whole class 

 of the insecta that it is desirable here to call attention to 

 other common instances of the mistakes committed by wasps, 

 butterflies, beetles, and other insect-genera or species. 



The wasp sometimes hatches her eggs at improper sea- 

 sons too early or too late for the development of the young 

 (Houzeau). 



The meat or flesh fly allows its sense of smell to be de- 

 ceived when it lays its eggs on stapelia hirsuta, the so- 

 called 'carrion-flower,' instead of on carrion, the result 

 being necessarily fatal to the maggots (Houzeau, * Animal 

 World '). The same fly, says Pouchet, sometimes mistakes 

 men drunk-asleep for dead bodies, and deposits her ' blows ' 

 on them. Other species of stapelia, which are Cape plants, 

 smell so like carrion that flesh-flies deposit their ova in their 

 flowers, the maggots when hatched being starved, of course, 

 for want of suitable food. 



Linnaeus and Pouchet, again, tell us of the so-called fly- 

 catcher (plant) the arum muscivorum the flower of which 

 has also the odour of putrefied meat, a smell that deceives 

 flies or other insects to the extent of leading them to de- 

 posit their eggs in the flower. The common domestic or 

 house fly sometimes deposits its ova in snuff, mistaking it 

 for poudrette, the result here also being that these ova perish 

 for lack of nourishment (Houzeau, Kirby and Spence). In- 

 sects make many other kinds of mistakes in regard io flowers. 

 Thus Sir John Lubbock remarks : ( Some flowers beguile 

 insects by holding out the expectation of honey, which does 

 not really exist.' 



Certain wood-boring beetles dig what prove to be their 

 own graves (Wallace). Advantage is taken by man of the 

 temper, pugnacity, and pertinacity of the tiger-beetle to 

 capture it (Baird). 



Foraging ants are deceived by the appearance of the leaf- 

 insect, so as not to notice it (Belt) an error apparently of 

 observation. The same ants in Nicaragua ran over and 



