XVIII 
WASPS 
One rough day in early autumn I paused in my 
walk in a Surrey orchard to watch a curious scene 
in insect life—a pretty little insect comedy I 
might have called it had it not brought back to 
remembrance old days when my mind was clouded 
with doubts, and the ways of certain insects, 
especially of wasps, were much in my thoughts. 
For we live through and forget many a tempest 
that shakes us; but long afterwards a very little 
thing—the scent of a flower, the cry of a wild 
bird, even the sight of an insect—may serve to 
bring it vividly back and to revive a feeling that 
seemed dead and gone. 
In the orchard there was an old pear-tree which 
produced very large late pears, and among the 
fruit the September wind had shaken down that 
morning there was one over-ripe in which the 
wasps had eaten a deep cup-shaped cavity. Inside 
the cavity six or seven wasps were revelling in the 
sweet juice, lying flat and motionless, crowded 
together. Outside the cavity, on the pear, thirty or 
forty blue-bottle flies had congregated, and were 
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