PxcKxuiy.] INSECTS or THE GArtDEX. 7 



others were deposited as barren eggs which, however, were 

 found to hatch out drones. It is also known that one of the 

 3'oung worker larvae when phiced in a separate cell and fed 

 upon a peculiar kind of bread became eventually a queen bee. 



These facts give some clew to the anomalies in the gene- 

 ration of plant lice (Fig. 2). Bonnet ascertained that the 

 spring brood of aphides were virgins, which throughout the 

 summer brought forth young alive. In the fall of the year, 

 however, winged individuals of both sexes appeared, and 

 during the winter the species was represented by eggs. 



It has since been discovered by able anatomists, with the 

 aid of the microscope, that these spring-born aphides so 

 wonderfully prolific, throw off from a " bud-stock," by a 



Fig. 2. 



Aphis or Plant Louse. 



process analogous to the budding and leaving out of plants, 

 or to the dropping off of hydroid medusa3 from their pol^'p- 

 stalks, whole multitudes of young plant lice, which mature 

 rapidly without passing through the intermediate stages of 

 egg, larval and pupal life common to most insects. As if 

 nature, in her exceeding haste to fill up her quotas of millions 

 of ready made sappers and miners of vegetable life for the 

 summer campaign, had disregarded all rules in her otherwise 

 well regulated house. In this connection we may refer to Dr. 

 Fitch's enumeration of the number of the Cherry Aphis, 

 produced between the 15th and 2.3th of June, and how these 

 immense numbers are reduced by insect enemies : — 



7 



