AMERICAN BLIGHT. 



head furnished with a pair of anteniife or horns, and for the 

 most part with a rostrum or sucking-tube, by means of which 

 the insects (as above mentioned) cause much injury. This 



Winged Woolly Aphis, magnified. 



rostrum is of enormous proportionate length in the aphides 

 when first produced, but it is stated to be absent in the egg- 

 laying female. The " honey-tubes," or cornicles, which are 

 to be found in the case of most aphides as upright tube-like 

 organs placed one on each side of the upper part of the 

 abdomen near the tip, are absent or rudimentary. 



The colour differs with condition or sex, but the aphides 

 may be generally described as of some shade of brown in 

 their older stages, and of warm brown or red or pinkish in 

 their earlier condition. The winged egg-producing female is 

 yellow tinged with red. 



The pupte (that is, the aphides before grown to maturity) 

 are " slightly clothed with down. The insects, when adult, 

 exude from their pores long silky threads, which curve round 

 a centre, and form long spiral filaments, under which they 

 hide." * This wool sometimes shows merely as a film, like a 

 little white mould in the crannies haunted by the plant-lice ; 

 sometimes it shows as tufts or patches on the trunks or 

 boughs, or on leaves or shoots — anywhere about the trees, in 

 fact, wdiere the plant-lice are allowed to establish themselves. 

 In these filmy masses the insects shelter themselves, and the 

 young may be found collected together thus even in severe 

 cold. I have myself found them in the woolly material 

 during the winter, and Mr. Buckton records finding the wing- 

 less larvffi alive and plentiful on Apple branches in December, 

 when snow was on the ground, and the thermometer stood 

 at 21° Fahr. Winged specimens may be found in July and 

 August. 



Prevention and Eemedies. — The great harbouring points 

 of this aphis, and the nooks from which the broods come forth 

 in spring to infest the trees, are crevices, especially such as 

 are formed of young bark sheltered under old dead masses. 

 It is therefore very important to keep up a clean, healthy, 

 well-trimmed state of the branches, such as will not allow of 



* For details of S. lanigera see 'Brit. Aphides,' by G. B. Buckton, vol. iii., 

 pp. 89-94. 



b2 



