160 FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE 



ultimately from food supplied it by the mother. 

 How one wasp can ever do so much in so short 

 a time is a marvel to all who have once watched 

 the process. 



While the baby wasps remain swaddled in their 

 cradle cells, their food consists in part of honey, 

 which the careful mother distributes to them im- 

 partially, turn about, and in part of succulent 

 fruits, such as the pulp of pears or peaches. The 

 honey our housekeeper either gathers for herself 

 or else steals from bees, for truth compels me to 

 admit that she is as dishonest as she is industrious ; 

 but on the whole, she collects more than she robs, 

 for many flowers lay themselves out especially for 

 wasps, and are adapted only for fertilisation by 

 these special visitants. Such specialised wasp- 

 flowers have usually small helmet-shaped blossoms, 

 exactly fitted to the head of the wasp, as you see 

 it in Mr. Knock's illustrations ; and they are for 

 the most part somewhat livid and dead - meaty 

 in hue. Common scrophularia, or fig-wort, is 

 a good example of a plant that thus lays itself 

 out to encourage the visits of wasps ; it has small 

 lurid-red flowers, just the shape and size of the 

 wasp's head, and its stamens and style are so 

 arranged that when the wasp rifles the honey at 

 the base of the helmet, she cannot fail to brush off 

 the pollen from one blossom on to the sensitive 

 surface of the next. Moreover, the scrophularia 

 comes into bloom at the exact time of year 

 when the baby wasps require its honey ; and you 

 can never watch a scrophularia plant for three 



