BLIGHT INSECTS. 173 



Plant-lice. Not only have you seen, but scarcely a summer's 

 day has passed without your having destroyed them by dozens. 

 Your foot annihilates them on the grass. They die by your 

 hand on almost every flower-sprig you gather ; and with every 

 vase of sweets which you place upon your table, you consign 

 them, without a thought, to the bitter death of famine : so 

 important and fatal is the influence which you, and everybody, 

 are continually exercising over the destinies of Aphis existence, 

 little as you would seem to known about it ; although, perhaps, 

 you may be better acquainted with it by sight than you are by 

 name. However blind from indifference to the minutiae of 

 nature, have you not often, when about to pluck a rose-bud or 

 a piece of honeysuckle, almost started to find the one a green 

 mass of moving life, the other with leaves green no longer, 

 but turned black to the eye, and clammy to the touch ? You 

 perceive, in short, that what most people call a " blight/' but 

 what naturalists only look on as a swarm of Aphides, has been 

 busy with your flowers before you, and turn away disgusted, 

 to seek for less contaminated sweets. 



To keep however to our blight Insects, call them what we 

 will, be it here noted that the popular belief concerning their 

 origin has of late years been assigned a place among popular 

 errors. That 



"When the wind is in the east 



'Tis neither good for man nor beast, 



is an ancient saw too well supported by the " modern instances ' 



