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.

corn'

"Réaumur designates the race of aphides as 'the very 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

6

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 insignificant 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.

"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

the assembly by which it is occupied; for being probably the tenth or last generation, it is likely to contain, at length, some of the lords of this curious creation. Ay, now we have them! here, amongst the green petticoats are some individuals distinguished by surtouts, some of bright yellow, some of orange, some of sober-brown,-colours worn in accordance, it is said, with their youth, middle, or advanced age. All these Mercuries wear wings; but even their pinions assume with equal propriety a corresponding hue deepening from white to transparent black, according to the period of their wearers' standing.

"The insect-race is celebrated for having numerous progenies, but these are far superior to all the rest. They are no fathers of ten in family, nor of twenty, nor of twenty times twenty, but (marvel of multiplication!) each of these sires can boast of being the actual parent of ten generations, all, save the last, made up of daughters! You who doubt whether this be true, or may desire to know how it has been proved, we refer to the scientific pages of Bonnet, Trembley, Richardson, Kennie, and a host of other unimpeachable

authorities."

The Ephemera vulgata, or may-fly, is literally a creature of a day. Let us examine our cloud-dropt insect a little minutely. Look at these four unequal wings, with nervures so delicately articulate, resembling the finest lace, the meshes filled by yellowish glassy membrane, and freaked with dark brown spots or squares. On the narrow chest and long and flexible body, the same colours are harmoniously disposed in spots and rings, and even the three slender filaments which form the tail are ringed, en suite, with black and yellow, the whole being covered with a natural varnish. How nicely jointed also, and finely polished are the six tapering legs, of which the two foremost are much longer than the others; forming, when placed together and stretched forward, a sort of counterpoise in flight to the filaments of the tail. Beside the large compound eyes, which occupy a great portion of the head, we can just discern without a magnifier, and clearly with one, three shining spots disposed in a triangle close behind them. These are the ocelli or simple eyes, common to most other perfect insects.

All this external beauty, with internal organism yet more

admirable, is intended but for the duration and uses of less than a single day! Fewer organs and far less adornment might seem, in our contracted judgment, to have sufficed for creatures during so short a time to employ the former, and to have the latter, in most cases overlooked at least by human observers. Occasionally indeed, as we are now doing, we are led to amuse what we call an idle hour, by bestowing a little notice on the more fleeting and fragile works of nature; and then, as we admire the elegance of form, the exquisite finish, the curious adaptation of parts, so strikingly, if not pre-eminently, observable in the flower or the insect of a day, there comes, mingled with our admiration, a feeling somewhat akin to wondering regret that so much pains should have been bestowed on the formation of an object intended to exist but for so short a space. "It's almost a pity! it's scarcely worth while!" are phrases which rising to our lips, are checked only by the monstrous unfitness of applying them to the works of an Infinite Being, with whom to will is to create, and to whom a day is as a thousand years -a thousand years as a day.

"To return to our insect of a day, or to speak with more precision, of from four to five hours, the supposed limit of existence with those amongst the ephemera permitted to reach a good old age. These, however, form probably but a minor portion of their countless swarms, liable as they are to continual 'accidents by flood and field;' if, indeed, we may regard as accidents those common catastrophes by which, for the benefit of other animals, they are designed to perish. Their dangers and disasters are thus pathetically enumerated by Swammerdam: 'Who,' says he, hath so great a genius, or is so conversant in the art of writing, as to be able to describe, with a due sense, the trouble and misfortunes to which this creature is subject during the short continuance of its flying life. For my part, I confess, I am by no means able to execute the task; nor did I know whether nature ever produced a more innocent and simple little creature, which is, nevertheless, destined to undergo so many miseries and horrible changes. An infinite number are destroyed in their birth, that is final transformation, by fish. Clutius acquits no species of fish of this cruelty except perch and pike. On land, when engaged in the work of