APPLE LEAVES LADY-BIRDS. '9$ 



*ommg to a plant-louse, much larger than itself it may be, the 

 little hero, though only a few minutes old, boldly seizes the louse, 

 which, like a cowardly poltroon, makes no resistance except try- 

 ing to pull himself away. But the little assailant hangs lustily 

 to him, preventing his advancing a single step further, and using 

 his anterior legs as arms, he commonly raises the louse off from 

 the leaf and leisurely devours his body, leaving only the empty 

 skin remaining. As he grows, the sides, and in some species the 

 whole surface, becomes diversified with bright red and yellow 

 spots and rows of tubercles or elevated points. He is a most ac- 

 tive voracious little creature, running briskly over the limbs and 

 leaves in search of his prey, and consuming hundreds of aphides.. 

 He grows to about a quarter of an inch in length in the course of 

 two or three weeks^ he then fixes himself by his tail to a leaf, or 

 the limb or trunk of a tree, and hanging with his head downwards 

 the skin cracks open along the middle of his back, and the smooth 

 back of the pupa protrudes partly out of the prickly skin of the 

 larva, and thus remains, the old larva skin continuing to cover 

 the pupa on each side and beneath. But in some of the species, 

 a, fact which I do not find mentioned by authors, the larva skin 

 is thrown entirely off, its shrivelled relics remaining around the 

 tail. It is thus with one of our largest species, named the apple- 

 tree lady-bird [Coccindla Mali) by Mr. Say, but which had long 

 before been described by the celebrated French entomologist 

 Olivier, under the name of the fifteen-spotted lady-bird ( C. 15- 

 punctatci) ; and probably the pupa of the European C. occellata 

 will be found to throw off its larva skin in this same manner, as 

 these two species are closely related, and have been elevated to 

 a distinct genus named Anatis by Mulsant. The pupa of the 

 fifteen-spotted lady-bird is quite pretty, being of a clear white 

 color with the middle of its back tinged with flesh-red, and with 

 from two to six black spots of different sizes on each of the seg- 

 ments, the sheaths of the elytra also having a broad black border 

 upon their inner side and four black spots. Exposed as the pupa 

 is upon the surface of a leaf or of the bark, it probably is often 

 discovered and devoured by birds, and to save it from such a 

 casualty appears to be the design of Nature in having most of the 

 species retain their prickly larva skins. When annoyed by the 



