With The Flora The Insects Cease;
Whether The Germ Comes From The Vegetation Or From The Insect That
Frequents The Vegetation Does Not Seem Known.
Still it would be worth
while to make a careful examination of the plant and insect life just at
the verge of the line of division.
The bacillus may spring from a spore
starting from a plant or starting from an insect. Most of England had an
Alpine climate probably once, and some Alpine plants and animals have
been stranded on the tops of our highest hills and remain there to this
day. In those icy times English lungs were probably free of disease. Has
formic acid ever been used for experiments on bacilli? It is the ant
acid; they are full of it, and it is extracted and used for some purposes
abroad. Perhaps its strong odour is repellent to parasites. To return:
while the honey-bees live in comparative safety, the more or less
solitary wild bees have a great struggle to repel various creatures that
would eat them or their young, and, be as watchful as they may, all their
efforts at nest-building are often rendered nugatory by the success of a
parasite. So it is not worth while to catch them just for the purpose of
identification, for they have enough enemies in the field without man and
his heartless cabinets. The collector is the most terrible parasite of
all. Let them go on with a happy hum, while the tulip opens in the
sunshine.
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