Old-fashioned Flowers. 203 
Wasps are incurable drunkards. If they find 
something sweet and tempting they stick to it, and 
swill till they fall senseless to the ground. They are 
then most dangerous, because unseen and unheard ; 
and one may put one’s hand on them in ignorance of 
their whereabouts. Noticing once that a particular 
pear tree appeared to attract wasps, though there was 
little or no fruit on it, I watched their motions, and 
found they settled at the mouth of certain circular 
apertures that had been made in the trunk. There 
the sap was slowly exuding, and to this sap the wasps 
came and sipped it till they could sip no more. The 
tree being old and of small value, it was determined 
to see what caused these circular holes. They were 
cut out with a gouge, when the whole interior of the 
trunk was found bored with winding tunnels, through 
which a pistol bullet might have been passed. This. 
had been done by an enormous grub, as long and large 
as one’s finger. 
Old-world plants and flowers linger still like heir- 
looms in the farmhouse garden, though their pleasant 
odour is ofttimes choked by the gaseous fumes from the 
furnaces of the steam-ploughing engines as they pass 
along the road to theirlabour. Then adark vapourrises- 
above the tops of the green elms, and the old walls 
tremble and the earth itself quakes beneath the pres- 
sure of the iron giant, while the atmosphere is tainted 
with the smell of cotton-waste and oil. How little these 
accord with the quiet, sunny slumber of the homestead. 
