CH. IX.] THE PEACH-INSECT. 175 



of a plant : the male insect, which is destined to 

 become a small winged creature, as soon as it has 

 its wings, crawls out backwards from its larval skin, 

 which served it for a cocoon while undergoing its 

 nymphine metamorphosis. 



The opening by which they quit their maternal 

 prison is provided also by nature. The posterior 

 portion of the body of the mother is cloven, and 

 cannot be exactly fitted to the tree — hence, the 

 young can escape without lacerating those parental 

 remains which had sheltered them even after death. 



After having got abroad, they fix themselves to 

 the leaves of trees, and their growth from June to 

 October, when they enlarge a little, is slow, but it is 

 only in the following April that they begin to assume 

 perceptibly a globular shape. At the falling of the 

 leaf, however, nature has taught them to retire to 

 the stem of the tree, where they finish their life. As 

 soon as the male has acquired wings, it does not fly 

 away, but walks, and it is towards the females fixed 

 on the tree that its steps are directed. The size of 

 the former is so small, in comparison with that of 

 the latter, that the globular body of the female ap- 

 pears a spacious territory, for the diminutive male 

 to walk about. 



There are other kinds of gall-insects, which do 

 not cover their young with their bodies, but secrete 

 a quantity of downy cotton, sufficient to form a 

 species of cocoon, on which they perch themselves. 

 The dark spot is the insect, the white bag the cocoon. 



