OUTLINES OF ENTOMOLOGY. 467 



Since perfect insects do not grow, it follows that they require but 

 little food ; some are incapable of taking even a sip of dew or nectar. 

 Others, like the butterfly aud wasp, have a very different diet from that 

 upon which they subsisted as larvie. Some species, however, such as 

 locusts, leaf-eating beetles, etc., retain their voracious propensities 

 throughout life. 



Hyper-metamorphosis, which attends the development of a few 

 species of parasitic beetles and some flies of the Ephemera family, is 

 the assumption of more than the usual number of forms in the process 

 of growth. The transformations of such species are not invariably 

 from a lower to a higher organization, but some of the intermediate 

 stages are often of a retrograde character. This anomalous mode of 

 development will be illustrated in succeeding chapters in connection 

 with the history of the Blister beetles, Bee parasites and Nerve -winged 

 flies. 



Such is an outline of the history, continually repeated, of all insect 

 life ; but the number of species is so vast, and their forms and habits 

 so different, that the careful observer finds an infinite variety of detail 

 which gives continual novelty and interest to the subject. 



Root Grafts and Whole Boots There is a deal of humbug 



about this cry of whole roots, and some of the traveling tree peddlers 

 have been using it as a means to rope in many well-read and intelligent 

 people. This I state on Prof. Budd's authority. A Duchess or any 

 other absolutely hardy variety, he says, "will make a good tree if grown 

 from a cutting, and when grafted on a short piece of root it practically 

 is a cutting, as the piece of root only starts it, and roots are thrown out 

 always from the cion. Fully 90 per cent of our three-year-old apple, 

 pear, cherry and plum trees are on their own roots if they have been 

 grafted with a long cion on a short root and set deeply. Yet the crown 

 graft is the best, and nurserymen could afford to make only one tree 

 from one seedling. But the whole root, idea is nonsense, as it would 

 have to be set with a crowbar if put down deep enough to cause it to 

 emit roots from the cion, as all our trees should do." 



