I 



HEMIPTERA. 1 23 



great distance, and that they arrived in Belgium by the sea-coast. 

 Whatever be the explanation of the phenomenon, it estabUshes 

 ifficiently the prodigious multipHcation of these Httle insects. 



There is another trait, and without doubt the most curious in the 

 story of the aphides, to which we have still to call the attention of 

 e reader : we mean the relations which exist between them and the 

 ,its. 



No one can have failed to observe ants frequenting those places 



here plant-lice are gathered together in great numbers. Are ants 



mply friends of the plant-lice, as thought the ancients ? or have 



eir visits some selfish object? 



Linnaeus, Bonnet, and Pierre Huber thought that the ants did not 



; ly these visits for nothing, and that they had some object in view. 



'.iX. what could they want of the plant-lice ? It is to Pierre Huber 



'J owe the solution of this mystery. This naturalist has made the 



lost beautiful observations on the relations which exist between 



]ant-lice and ants. They are detailed in a chapter of his admirable 



i)rk, entitled " Recherches sur les Moeurs des Fourmis Indigenes." 



The plant-lice have, as we have said, at the extremity of their 

 idomen, two small movable horns. These are in communication 

 r \th a little gland which produces a sugary liquid. When one care- 

 fly observes plant-lice attached to the stem of a plant, one sees a 

 : kle syrup droplet oozing out of the extremity of these tubes. 



M. Morren, who has made some interesting observations on the 

 ; satomy and generation of the aphis, says that, having shut up 

 : fnales in wide-mouthed glass bottles, he saw the young, a little time 

 ': aer their birth, suck the sweet juice which exudes from the little 

 . toes at the extremity of the mother's abdomen. This secretion 

 r sems, then, destined for the nourishment of the young in the first 

 Dements of their existence, before they are able to nourish them- 

 es ves on vegetable juices. The saccharine fluid produced by the 

 vibther must be, then, a sort of milk intended for the nourishment of 

 ■■•'h: young. This being settled, attend to what follows. In all places 

 tirvsere plant-lice are assembled in great numbers it is easy to observe 

 p(-;h>v excessively fond ants are of the sugary liquid destined for 

 T: sickling the young. But how do the ants manage to get the plant- 

 li'' to allow themselves to be, as we may say, milked ? 



" It had been already noticed," says this celebrated observer, 



'' lat the ants waited for the moment at which the plant-lice caused 



tl; precious manna to come out of their abdomen, which they 



iniediately seized. But I discovered that this was the least of their 



; tc'mts, and that they also knew how to manage to be served v/ith 



