[September, 
528 Insect Preferences. 
appears that wasps as well as flies are unclean feeders, and 
that they may deposit upon our food or our persons putre- 
factive ferments, or possibly disease germs. 
As to bees and butterflies, their preferences for certain 
flowers have already been made the subject of not a few 
interesting observations ; but we are as yet far removed from 
being able to reduce their predilections, either for odours or 
colours, to any definite principle. 
It is certain that, as far as the scents of plants are con- 
cerned, inseCt likings are not as human likings. Of this I 
have just had some very striking instances. Opposite the 
window of the room where I am writing these lines stand 
a number of privet-bushes in full bloom. The air is full of 
their odour, which near at hand is very peculiar and scarcely 
describable, whilst at a greater distance it has a sugary, but 
somewhat sickly, character. Neither near nor far, however, 
does it strike my scent-nerves agreeably, and a number of 
persons whom I have asked all agree that they could not 
regard it as a perfume. Yet these privet-blossoms are at 
this moment simply crowded with hive-bees, wild bees of 
various sorts, large and small “ cabbage-whites, ’ painted 
ladies, small tortoiseshells without end, and a few large 
ones. By way of contrast, among the privets stands a 
Syringa in full blossom ; but its flowers, so much more 
pleasant to human organs, have scarcely a winged visitor, or 
if by chance a bee or a butterfly strays over it is evidently a 
mistake, and the inseCt loses no time in getting back to the 
privet flowers. 
To take a similar case : at a little distance off is a patch 
of prickly comfrey, full of flowers. The smell of this plant 
when handled is positively offensive. The flowers have a 
dull, herbaceous odour, slightly blended with a sugary sick- 
liness ; but the whole patch is perfectly alive with bees. It 
would be easy to net half a dozen at a single stroke of an 
inseft-net. The colour of the flowers is also not very 
striking — a dull, washed-out, reddish violet. 
Another plant much haunted by inseas, but more by but- 
terflies than by bees, is the so-called African Sedum. Its 
odour is not very enticing, is of the sugary class, and its 
colour is a reduced impure red, — such a colour, in faa, as 
might be produced by setting a very awkward apprentice to 
dye a grain crimson upon dirty woollen cloth, and giving 
him very inferior materials. There is scarcely any plant 
which more deserves cultivation by lovers of moths and 
butterflies in country, or even suburban, distrias. Sweet 
marjoram, another plant which much resembles the African 
