226 



Marvels of Insect Life. 



Some observers have noted that the boatman produces a sound hke the words 

 clieic. cJicw, chew, rubbing its front pair of legs together at the same time. 



The female boatman attaches her eggs to the stalks of water-plants, making 

 an incision with her egg-placer, and burying about two-thirds of the egg in the sht. 

 As in the other bugs, there is little difference except in size and the absence of wings 

 between the infant and the adult. The Insect is continuously active throughout life, 

 and the wings make their first appearance as buds, which expand at the final moult. 



Green-Fly. 



Whoever owns or has owned a garden has suffered from the dreadful oppression 



of the green-fly, or plant-lice.-^ 

 There is a stage in the develop- 

 ment of the amateur gardener in 

 \\iiich the green-fly are worse than 

 dragons. So far as one can learn 

 of dragons from old authors, though 

 they may be individually terrible 

 they are not common, not attack- 

 ing one in hordes, and are large 

 enough to be seen from a distance. 

 Cireen-fly are so terribly small, so 

 prolific, and so ubiquitous, that 3'ou 

 do not notice their advent until 

 thev have increased to millions ; 

 you destroy a million all but one, 

 and the next time you pass that 

 way the one has become a million 

 again ; you spend half your sub- 

 stance on aphis-brushes and in- 

 secticides, and drive them fromi one 

 favourite rose-bush only to find 

 that they have taken possession of 

 another equally desirable. If only 

 we could extirpate the green-fly, 

 what gardens we would have ! 

 And yet, if we look around us when we go abroad into Nature's garden, we 

 do not find that the green-fly, though plentiful, are so painfully evident as in our 

 own little enclosure ; neither do any of the wild plants appear to be extirpated 

 by their attacks. The truth is that much of the trouble is due to unnatural conditions, 

 and much of the damage debited to the green-fly is accomplished by much larger 

 and less prolific Insects. Green-fly do not strip off leaves or bite big holes in them, 

 as we have been seriously assured they have done in our neighbours' gardens. 

 The green-fly is not built for the consumption of solids. Its mouth is developed 

 mto a delicate hollow needle with which it bores into leaves and sappy shoots, and 

 through which it sucks the fluid from the plant cells it has tapped. The loss of 



^ Aphis. 



Photo by] 



Young Boatman. 



[H. S. CJtcavin, F.K.M.S. 



A magnilk-d representation of a newly hatched boatman from the under 

 side, showing that it has the same general form throughout life, only 

 modified by the acquisition of wings in the adult state. 



