OBSERVATIONS ON INSECT LIFE 177 



friend, seems to suggest some glimmer of consciousness 

 and perhaps a tiny gleam of reason. 



Next to the ants, no insects in the valley interested 

 me more than the various kinds of bees and wasps 

 with their many peculiar instincts. The widespread 

 species, Vespa orientalis, that extends into Northern 

 Africa and Southern Europe, was very common in the 

 district. I sometimes watched a continual stream of 

 these wasps, large, brown, ferocious-looking insects 

 with bright yellow bands on their abdomens, passing 

 backwards and forwards. Those passing in the one 

 direction were laden with a rich store of provender, 

 and those in the opposite direction were returning 

 empty for a fresh load. It was a perfect picture of 

 insect industry and labour. I once followed the living 

 stream across the country. At length I found the 

 nest in the wall of a neighbouring village, and from 

 there I traced back for over a mile the line of busy 

 workers and did not even then reach the furthest 

 limits of their toil. Over the granite rocks, across 

 the open plains, high above the village roofs and the 

 waving fields of corn, the stream of insect labour 

 moved in one continuous flow. What sense was 

 guiding them in their unerring road ? What force 

 impelled them in the same unswerving line, to chose a 

 course direct, undeviating and headlong to their nest? 

 It may have been the rocks and trees that were the 

 landmarks on their route, but I greatly doubt it. To 

 see a wasp sailing in an unerring flight high over a 

 broad expanse of corn and shaping a course direct for 

 its distant nest, was to feel that some other sense than 

 sight impelled it, for to a wasp a rolling field of corn 

 must be as trackless as a boundless ocean. 



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