78 APPLE LEAVES, APHIS LIONS DESCRIPTION. 



crops of late years. A number of the small yellow grubs 

 sufficient to destroy every kernel in a head of wheat would no 

 more than suffice an aphis-lion for a single meal. And if these 

 voracious creatures are usually so common as I have found them 

 to be the present season, it would be an easy matter for a person 

 who is familiar with them to gather such a number of the eggs 

 and larvae as, scattered through a wheat-field infested by the 

 midge, would greatly diminish the damage done by this insect. 



The larvae of different species of these insects differ considera- 

 bly in their colors. They' are mostly of a reddish-brown color, 

 with a darker stripe in the middle, and a cream-colored along 

 each side. They have bodies of a long narrow weasel-like form, 

 wrinkled transversely, with six rather long legs anteriorly. But 

 they may be distinguished from all our other insects and larvse by 

 their two long slender jaws, curved like sickles, which project 

 horizontally forwards from their heads. Along each side is a 

 row of projecting points, one to each segment, from the ends of 

 which several fine bristles radiate in all directions. Others have 

 the whole of their backs covered with rows of similar elevated 

 points and radiating bristles, giving them a truly frightful ap- 

 pearance. But these have the artifice to conceal themselves from 

 view, by placing the empty skins of their victims between their 

 radiating bristles, so that they adhere, and completely hide the 

 insect from view. It is the skins of the woolly plant-lice which 

 they mostly employ for this purpose. Thus covered they resem- 

 ble a little mass of white down adhering to the bark of the apple 

 tree, and at a short distance one of these insects thus covered can 

 scarcely be distinguished from a colony of the Apple-tree blight, 

 which is usually covered with a mass of down of similar size and 

 appearance. Thus disguised they are able to approach their vic- 

 tims without exciting their alarm and putting them to flight. It 

 is in autumn that the species which thus cover themselves appear 

 upon the apple trees. I have noticed none but the naked kinds 

 without bristly backs in July and August 



The Larvae cast their skins soon after birth and often before they have taken 

 any nourishment. No other moulting occurs, that I have observed, until they 

 change to pupae. When newly born, the larva of the New-York Golden-eye 

 is 0.05 long, soft and tender, long and narrow, with the opposite sides of the 

 head and thorax straight and parallel, the abdomen tapering. It is white, with 



