APPLE LEAVES, APHIS LIONS — DESCRIPTION. 79 



two dusky stripes upon the head, and the outer side of its long sickle-shaped 

 jaws is blackish. Its back is at this time clothed with numerous long line 

 hairs. It walks about with an easy, sedate step, making very good progress, 

 and could readily crawl down a tall tree and probably travel some distance 

 therefrom before it has taken any nourishment. When full grown it is about 

 0.J50 long, broadest in the middle, and tapering thence to both ends, but more 

 posteriorly; its color is reddish brown, paler in the middle of the back, with 

 a narrow darker stripe the whole length of its body. It presents numerous 

 transverse impressed lines above, those at the sutures being more conspicuous. 

 The sides of each segment are cream-yellow and protuberant, forming elevated 

 points, with short diverging white hairs A 1the apex. Under side pale. Head 

 pale with two blackish stripes which taper and diverge from each other anteri- 

 orly. The antennae are about as long as the jaws, slender and tapering, with- 

 out any apparent joints. The jaws are tinged with dusky. The legs are pale 

 and somewhat translucent, with a dusky band above and another below the 

 knees; the feet are also dusky. The twelfth and thirteenth, or the two last 

 segments are quite narrow and destitute of tubercles tipped with radiating 

 hairs on each side, but have two black stripes on their upper side. They form 

 a kind of tail turning in every direction, and by the tip of the last segment the 

 insect adheres, particularly to smooth surfaces like glass, much more securely 

 than it can do with its feet. This adhesion appears io be effected by a power 

 of suction in this part. 



The larvae of the other species of Chrysopa appears to be similar to the one 

 which has now been described. One of them, however, has fallen under my 

 notice, having the whole surface above mottled with light yellow and brownish 

 red, with a slender black line on the middle of the back, having a reddish spot 

 upon it in the centre of each segment, and the head with two black spots on 

 its base and a black stripe anteriorly upon the middle. The species which is 

 produced from this I have not yet ascertained. 



Having attained its growth, the aphis-lion for its final meal 

 gluts itself as full as its skin can hold. For two days afterwards 

 it remains torpid and inactive, as though sick of a surfeit. It 

 then commences spinning its cocoon. This operation is performed 

 by its tail, which is supplied with a glutinous fluid similar to that 

 from which the spider spins its web, which adheres to whatever 

 point it is applied, and hardens immediately upon exposure to the 

 air. The amount of lite and motion which the tail possesses at 

 this time, when all the rest of the body is lying still and unem- 

 ployed, is truly astonishing. Like the head of a leech, it con- 

 tracts, elongates and turns from side to side and up and down 

 with the vivacity of the hand of a musician beating upon a tarn 

 bourine, attaching its thread here and there as it darts around 

 from point to point. By the New-York Golden-eye scattering 

 threads are first fixed around the hollow in the bark, or elsewhere 



