APHIS HERDS AND ANT ASSOCIATES 



and their services are extremely valuable. Perhaps 

 it is this which has created the friendly popular senti- 

 ment toward these pretty beetles. It is rare to hear an 

 utterance of dislike toward them, and they fairly rival 

 butterflies as general favorites. Their young are small, 

 flattened grubs of a bluish or blue-black color, spotted 

 usually with red or yellow, and furnished with six legs 

 near the forepart of the body. They are hatched from 

 little yellow eggs laid in clusters among the plant-lice, 

 so that they find themselves at once within reach of their 

 prey, which from their superior strength they are able 

 to seize and slaughter in great numbers. 



Another enemy of the aphis is the golden-eyed lace- 

 winged fly (Chrysopa perala), which is of a yellow-green 

 color, and has four wings resembling delicate lace. It 

 gives out an offensive odor. It suspends its eggs by 

 threads in clusters beneath the leaves or where plant- 

 lice abound. The larva is a long and cylindrical grub 

 provided with jaws moving laterally, which perforate the 

 body with a hole, through which it sucks the juice of its 

 victims. It requires only one minute to kill the largest 

 aphis and suck out the fluid contents of the body. 



This sketch of the life history of aphids will be appre- 

 ciated by those who have learned the story of their rela- 

 tions to the ant. That their value as food producers 

 should have been discovered and utilized by such in- 

 veterate scouts and scavengers and cosmopolitan feeders 

 as ants is not strange. But that they should have ac- 

 quired the art of "milking" them; should have learned 

 to seclude them for their own use within walled en- 

 closures, as sheep within a fold ; even to rear them with- 

 in their own bounds and dwelling, tending them as a 

 herder or farmer does his domestic cattle, protecting 



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