56 INJURIOUS INSECTS. 



and clothe themselves, like Hercules, with the spoils of their hapless victims. 

 The next destroyer in our list comes the interesting Syrphice, whose larvae 

 are armed with a singular mandible, furnished, like a trident, with three 

 points. Being blind he fixes himself by the tail, and gropes about on 

 every side till he touches one, when he immediately transfixes it with his 

 trident- shaped mandible, holding it up in the air as if not to be disturbed 

 by its struggles for life, and when dead devours it. Notwithstanding the 

 disadvantage of being blind, he makes his way from branch to branch with 

 astonishing assiduity, examining by feeling about with the nicest discrimina- 

 tion even the remotest twigs. Having cleared a twig, monkey-like he 

 swings himself to the next, and recommences his operations of rapacity. 



"Not half sufficed, and greedy yet to kill." 



In this way thousands of Aphides are consumed by these larvae, and so 

 silly and helpless are their prey, that so far from thinking of escaping 

 from their enemy, they may actually be seen walking over his back with 

 the greatest indifference, and when seized resigning themselves to their 

 doom almost without a struggle. In addition to these a small species of 

 Ichneumon deposits its eggs in their bodies. These eggs soon assume the 

 larva state, and consume the interior of the Aphis, till at length it sickens, 

 and, like the stricken deer, retires from the herd to die alone. Such are 

 the remarkably globose specimens of withered straw tint which are frequently 

 found firmly adhering to leaves, etc., showing a minute hole through which, 

 on attaining its winged form, the parasite made its escape. 



Serviceable as the foregoing insects are, they must make room, and even 

 yield to the interesting Coccinella, L., or Lady bird, the favourite insect 

 of our childhood, as the greatest enemy of the Aphides, for on these pests 

 their larvse entirely live, with the exception of G. Meroglyphica, which, 

 according to Professor Reich, lives solely on the leaves of Erica vulgaris, 

 (Common Heath.) These insects the hop-grower and the horticulturist will 

 do well by protecting as much as they possibly can. They are generally 

 seen in years when the Aphides are abundant. 



Mr. Kirby states, "that in the year 1807, the shore at Brighton, and 

 on the south coast, was literally covered with them, to the great surprise 

 and even alarm of the inhabitants, who were ignorant that their little 

 visitors were emigrants from the neighbouring hop grounds, where, in their 

 larvae state, each had slain his thousands and tens of thousands of Aphides. 



From what we have already advanced, it will be apparent to those 

 unacquainted with entomology, that the insects we have described above, 

 in gratifying their own appetite, deliver us from a dreadful scourge, which 

 is by many termed "Blight." We often hear intelligent men say, "there 

 is blight in the air to-day," when this supposed "blight" is animal life, 



