170 



SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



[August!, 1 866. 



they now are. Even without this knowledge, 

 nothing is more easy, as I have experienced, than 

 to clear a plant or small tree by placing upon it 

 several larva? of Coccinella, or of aphid ivorous flies 

 collected from less valuable vegetables." 



And in another portion of the same work the 

 author says : — 



"As the locust-eating thrush accompanies the 

 locusts, so the ladybirds seem to pursue the aphides ; 

 for I know no other reason to assign for the vast 

 number that are sometimes, especially in the autumn, 

 to be met with on the sea-coast, or the banks of 

 large rivers. Many years ago, those of the Humber 

 were so thickly strewed with the common ladybird, 

 that it was difficult to avoid treading on them. 

 Some years afterwards I noticed a mixture of 

 species, collected in vast numbers, on the sand-hills 

 on the sea-shore at the north-west extremity of 

 Norfolk. My friend, the Rev. Peter Lathbury, 

 made long since a similar observation at Orford, on 

 the Suffolk coast ; and about five or six years ago 

 they covered the cliffs of all the watering-places on 

 the Kentish and Sussex coasts, to the no small alarm 

 of the superstitious, who thought them forerunners 

 of some direful evil." 



The Reading Mercury informs us that the autho- 

 rities of a Berkshire town were alarmed in October, 

 1835, by a most formidable invasion of these beau- 

 tiful insects, and that the parish engines, as well as 

 private ones, were called into requisition, with 

 tobacco-fumigated water, to attack and disperse 

 them. 



5 W « o 



Fig. 156. Ladybird (Coccinella 7 -punctata), 

 a, larva ; b, pupa ; c, perfect insect. 



Curtis informs us that the ladybirds hybernate 

 and pass the winter in the crevices of paling and 

 trunks of trees under loose bark, in dry leaves, on 

 the ground, &c, and are therefore ready on the 

 shortest notice to come from their hiding-places, 

 from which they are allured by the sunny clays of 

 December, and on the approach of spring are 

 amongst our first vernal visitors, when the female 

 lays her little eggs beneath leaves, close together, 

 in clusters of about fifty. They are cylindrical, buff- 

 coloured, and set on one end; from these, little 

 sprawling larvse soon issue, of a lead colour, gaily 

 ornamented with orange or scarlet spots, and are 

 soon spread over the leaves of trees, palings, grass 

 in fields ; indeed, everywhere in the vicinity of the 



plant-lice, to which they are much more formidable 

 than their parents. Their method of attacking the 

 aphides is curious. I have seen one of these 

 struggling, whilst this little insect alligator threw 

 his forelegs about it, and was greatly amused at the 

 skill it exhibited ; for, fearing that the aphis might 

 escape, it gradually slid along to the wings, which 

 were closed, and immediately began to bite them, 

 so that in a very short time they were rendered 

 useless, being matted together ; it then returned in 

 triumph to the side of its helpless victim, and 

 seizing the thorax firmly in its grasp, it ate into the 

 side, coolly putting its hind leg over those of the 

 aphis, whose convulsive throbs annoyed its relent- 

 less enemy. These larvse are full-grown in about a 

 fortnight or three weeks, when they are from a 

 quarter to a third of an inch long and upwards ; 

 they are then slate-coloured and yellow, with nu- 

 merous black spots and hairy tubercles down the 

 back, intermixed with a few scarlet spots. They 

 soon retire to a leaf or some secure locality, and 

 attaching themselves by the tail, change to pupse of 

 a shining black colour, with a row of orange spots 

 down the back. Thus they remain during another 

 fortnight or three weeks, when the inmate bursts 

 through her cell, and appears again a perfect lady- 

 bird. 



THE END OE ODD EISHES. 



O EVERAL observers had noticed certain remark- 

 ^ able appendages, as of frequent occurrence on 

 individuals of most of the species belonging to the 

 genus Aspredo. In the " Regne Animal," we find 

 Cuvier alludes to them "as globules, which appear to 

 be their eggs, adhering to the thorax by pedicles." 

 Bloch also observed them, and not clearly under- 

 standing what such an unusual accumulation of 

 strange-looking pores meant, described a species of 

 the six-barbled Aspredo (A. sex-cirrhis) as being 

 new to science, naming it Platystaclms cotylephoms. 

 In the Eistoire Naturelle des Poissons, we read, " I 

 have never seen them in the males, and the females 

 do not possess them at all seasons." Here the author 

 clearly imagines these appendages mark some 

 peculiar condition of the female, an assumption 

 more recent investigations prove to be quite correct. 

 The Aspredo batrachus, or toad-like Aspredo, is 

 not by any means attractive as an object of beauty ; 

 the upper jaw, broad and flat, projects far beyond 

 the lower, the eyes are small, and the ugly uukiss- 

 able-looking mouth is further — I cannot say adorned, 

 supplied will do — with eight long fleshy pendants, 

 barbels or beards in other words, which dangle, 

 like living fishing-lines, from different parts of this 

 odd and ugly fish's face. Two barbels spring from 

 the maxillary ; these are dilated at their bases into 

 broad ribbon-like membranes, from each of which 

 sprouts a single baby-barbel; 'a third pair grow 



