descendants which are sure, by that time, to have sprung from the race of aphides now in being-not as these, from the egg, but after the manner of viviparous animals. This may seem a strange anomaly, but there are things to tell of aphis economy stranger still.

"Now for our blight-disfigured rose-bud, which instead of encasing green and bursting red, displays nothing but a moving multitude-a conglomeration of plant-lice, which taken en masse, is certainly no pleasing object. For all this, the little winged animal which, as being more conspicuous than the bulk of his fellows, we shall first single from among them, is no inelegant specimen of nature's Lilliputian workmanship. It has a plump shining body of deep bright green, spotted at the sides with black; long slender legs, inclining to reddish, and, like a bamboo reed, marked at every joint with black or darkest brown. The shoulders, head, and long-jointed antennæ are also chiefly black, as well as two diverging spikelets proceeding from the back; while a pair of ample wings, much longer than the body, rise exactly over it.

"This pretty insect, and those which resemble it, look like the aristocracy of the wingless multitude by which they are surrounded; and though we cannot pronounce their pinions to be borne as badges of rank, we believe that no reason has, as yet, been assigned with certainty for the partial distribution among aphis tribes of the organs of flight, which do not, with them, as with other insects, serve as a distinction either of age or sex. A cause, indeed, which if true, is most curious and interesting, has been assigned for this difference of endowment among the aphides. It has been supposed to depend on the quality and quantity of nourishment within their reach; those which in this respect are well provided on a juicy luxuriant shoot, being wingless; while those on a dry and sapless branch are gifted with pinions to waft them in search of better provender. Supposing this idea to be correct, we have herein another striking instance, added to the many, of providing care in that Power which careth for all, and adapts for all the means to the exigence.

"If we examine, now, the wingless multitude-the canaille of our rose-bud-we shall find that the individuals which

comprise it have shorter legs and flatter bodies than their winged superiors, and that they differ exceedingly in size from one another. For the most part their colour is a light green, though some are of a pale red; but however else they differ, all, both winged and wingless, are furnished with one remarkable appendage common to the whole aphis tribe, to whatever plant peculiar, from the lordly oak to the lowly briar. This is the transtellum, trunk, or sucking-pipe, appended beak-like to the head, and which, consisting of a tube both pointed and perforated, serves the double purpose of piercing the leaf and sucking its juices.

"The pipes of these our little ravagers of the rose, are but as beaklets compared with those of their brethren of the oak, yet they form, we can tell you, no despicable instruments of destruction employed as they are by thousands in simultaneous and incessant labour. And this considered, who can wonder at the marvellous and unsightly changes, the spoil and havoc, which these peaceful armies carry in their wake. The leaf, whose surface, when they take it in possession, resembles a smooth, green plain, or, divided by intersecting veins, a country of verdant fields, is presently warped and converted into barren hills and arid dales by the extraction of its fertilising sap: while the tender bud and vigorous shoot, though differently are equally distorted and desiccated by their operations.

"For the most part, these insect maurauders, living to eat and to be eaten, seem to have no other business, no thought or care, except on the matter of supplies, and take no trouble to conceal their ranks from the observation of their numerous enemies, or even to shelter themselves from the stormy wind and rain which sweep them off by millions.

"But to this general rule there are numerous exceptions, and a familiar instance of their defensive works is to be met with on every aphis-blighted currant bush. Take one

of these leaves which are so often seen bloated by raised blister spots of brownish red, examine their answering concavities beneath, and within their snug recesses you will intrude on as many social groups of aphides, using their pipes in each separate divan.

"Some other species, common on poplar, lime, &c., are

provided with places of assembly, habitation and concealment of a far more comfortable and complete description; but of these we shall have more to say by and by, when speaking of gall-insects.

*

* *

"Most of us have heard of honey-dew, and know, probably, that it is a sweet, clammy substance, found on the leaves of various trees and plants, especially on the oak, the vine, the hop, and the honeysuckle. As to the real nature of this sweet poison to the plants opinions differ. Careful observation seems, however, to have pretty clearly ascertained that this honey-dew (like the honey of bees, of vegetable origin), is extracted with the sap secreted, and then thrown out by the aphides in a state of the greatest purity. Besides the profusion of sweets which they scatter around them, like sugar-plums at a carnival, they always keep a good supply within the green jars of their bodies. By the lavish distribution of their saccharine riches, our little aphides make for themselves, it is true, a few interested friends, while, on the other hand, they owe to their possession a host of devouring enemies.

"Réaumur designates the race of aphides as 'the very corn' sown for the use of their more powerful insect-brethren; but as animate creatures, as well as gregarious green-leafgrazers, they have been considered with more propriety, as the oves and the boves, the flocks and the herds of those which seem permitted to hold them in possession. Foremost among the aphidophagi, or feeders upon aphides, we must rank the lady-bird. Innocent as she looks, that misnamed Vache à Dieu, instead of grazing innocently on the fruits of the earth, loves nothing better than to stuff under her scarlet mantle carcass after carcass of aphis lamb or mutton. Even before she puts on her scarlet, and while yet in her own tender youth, in other words while she is yet only a six-legged grub, she fairly fattens on aphides. Wherever these abound, whether in hop-ground, in beanfield, or in rosery, there the lady-birds are gathered together, and in all such places they do the cultivator more good by their united appetites than he can do for himself by all his precautions against 'the fly.' Numerous are the winged tribes called aphidivorous, or aphis-eating flies, and among these is the beautiful gold-eyed, lace-winged fly, which, while

yet in its crawling minority, roams through its appropriated leafy fold making tremendous use of its crooked and perforated tusks, first to slaughter and then to suck in the sweet juices of its victims at the rate of two in a minute. Of less ferocious aspect but not a whit less insatiate is the green, or parti-coloured grub of a bee-like fly, called a syrphus, of which many varieties are common in gardens, darting from flower to flower, or hovering hawk-like over them. Applied closely to a leaf or stalk by their hinder extremities, which are broad and flattish, the grubs of these syrphi may, in June, be noticed by dozens, on the search for aphis-prey by which they are usually surrounded.

"The above are the most rapacious of those comparatively bulky devourers, that, to the extensive benefit of vegetation and of man, appropriate aphis flocks by wholesale; but the aphis individual, atom as he is, is by no means so insig nificant as to escape individual attack. Even the aphis is great enough to have a parasite. One, a small black ichneumon fly, pierces the little green body of the unconscious sap-sucker, and deposits therein a tiny egg, from which springs a tiny worm, that feasts and grows to maturity within its living receptacle.

"When the egg is deposited in the body of the aphis," says Kirby, "the body of the victim swells and becomes smooth though still full of life. Those, thus pricked, separate themselves from their companions, and take their station on the under side of the leaf. After some days the grub hatched from the enclosed egg pierces the body of the aphis, and attaches the margin of the orifice to the leaf by silken threads. Upon this the aphis dies, becomes white and resembles a brilliant bead or pearl." Every aphis-covered rose-leaf will furnish instances of what is here described.

"But enough of aphis-enemies; now for the friends. We have hitherto seen our flocks of the leaf appropriated as sheep for the slaughter, but those to whom this fact, however new, will appear nothing strange, may smile incredulous on being told that as 'milch kine' they are sometimes kept, tended, and even reared by insect proprietors for the sake of the sweet milk-the honey-dew-which they afford.

This patriarchal practice is exercised by various tribes of economic ants, though the yellow ant-Formica flava-has

THE APHIDES, THEIR ENEMIES AND FRIENDS. 315

been termed the greatest cow-keeper of them all. Ants and aphides are held together by some bond of union. They are continually seen in company, and a little further scrutiny presently discovers that the ants are followers of the aphides for what they can get out of them. Last

autumn, the stalks of an elder shrub in our garden, were absolutely blackened at the joints by elder-aphides, and among these were continually to be seen a multitude of brown ants demanding and receiving their supplies of honey-dew as emitted by the former.

"There is yet another peculiarity which distinguishes the aphis from perhaps every other creature in the animal world, a physical enigma about which the divers into nature's secrets long puzzled their heads in vain, until at last a clever, patient Frenchman, M. Trembley, hit upon what is considered its solution.

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'Now, when you see in spring or early summer a group of aphides, a group of leaves covered with them, or even a group of trees which they have made their own, it is certain (at least we can answer for the fact on good authority), that in all the multitude on which you cast your eye, you will be looking on none but aphides (whether winged or wingless) of the feminine gender. Where then are the lords of these numerous ladies? is a question you very naturally ask. Why, they are not in existence and never have been. The ladies may have had fathers, they have children (to be seen like chickens busy with their bills around them), but with perfect truth, they neither have, nor ever have had husbands.

"Now, suppose all the elderly matrons presiding over this assembly to have gone the way of all flesh of aphides, and that you are looking on a similar company composed of their immediate descendants. Still presenting the same remarkable deficiency, if deficiency it be, of masculine members, this assemblage will consist entirely of the daughters and granddaughters of the defunct; and as not one of them, though each in her turn is pretty sure to become a mother, can ever boast of a son, so it goes on, even to the tenth generation. "Suppose lastly, that in September or October, you fall in with another company of aphides, regaling on an autumn rose-branch. If so, pluck it, and let us scrutinise together