168 DESTRUCTIVE INSECTS OF VICTORIA: 



exhausted, and not until then do the males appear. This 

 does not occur until the end of the season, when the per- 

 fect insects pair and produce eggs for the next year." 



The eggs are laid chiefly in crevices and folds of the 

 leaves, and in the sheltered spots afforded by the footstalk. 



As many of the plants on which the aphis feeds are 

 annuals, there would be risk of the particular races 

 becoming extinct. Gilbert White, in his evergreen and 

 charming Natural History of Selborne^ tells us that — 

 " About three o'clock in the afternoon of the day (1st 

 August), which was very hot, the people of this village 

 were surprised by a shower of aphides. Those that were 

 walking in the streets at that juncture found themselves 

 covered with these insects, which settled on the hedges 

 and gardens, blackening all the vegetables whereon they 

 alighted. My annuals were quite discoloured with them, 

 and the stalks of a bed of onions were quite coated over 

 for six days after. These armies were then, no doubt, 

 in a state of emigration, and shifting their quarters, and 

 might have come, as far as we know, from the great hop 

 plantations of Kent or Sussex, the mnd being all day in 

 the easterly quarter." 



Numerous instances of the extraordinary rapidity with 

 which these little pests increase might be quoted, but the 

 above will suffice for our purpose, as showing with what 

 a formidable foe we have to deal. 



In the great market-gardening district of Brighton and 

 neighbourhood, it is, in the summer-time, not at all 

 pleasant to walk through the cabbage fields, as when the 

 plants are badly attacked putrefaction takes place, and in 

 such cases renders the smell almost unbearable, the 

 plants themselves presenting a soft and flabby appearance, 

 and being in many cases totally unfit for human con- 

 sumption. The cabbage moth is bad enough, but this 

 pest is much more disgusting, and even more difficult to 

 get rid of when once fairly established. 



The aphidsB are of great antiquity, and Buckton, in his 

 fine work on the British Aphides^ gives illustrations of 

 many fossil kinds, whose preserved forms have remained 



