548 INSECTS AT HOME. 



do not possess the honey-dew distilling apparatus, and the 

 antennae are shorter than in the generality of the Aphidse. Tlie 

 peculiarity, however, which principally distinguishes them is 

 the envelopment with woolly fibre, which almost entirely covers 

 the body, and renders it so light in comparison with its size 

 that it can be blown through the air like a small tuft of swan's 

 down, and in this way it passes from one locality to another. 

 The best known of these insects is that which is popularly 

 called American Blight {Eriosoma aphis, or Lachnus lani- 

 gera), which sometimes overruns our orchards in a marvellously 

 rapid manner, and sometimes destroys hundreds of apple-trees 

 by its vast numbers. 



The following graphic and amusing description of this insect, 

 and the best mode of getting rid of it, is given in the ' Letters 

 of Rusticus,' to which reference has already been made : — 



' I don't know why our brethren on the other side the 

 Atlantic are charged with sending us the greatest pests of our 

 orchards, but so it is. We call an insect the American Blight, 

 which, for aught I could ever make out, may have come from 

 China or Botany Bay. However, a name once in vogue will 

 have its day ; and one might as well attempt to turn a pig in 

 an entry as argue against an established belief, so American 

 Blight it shall be. In very hot weather you may now and 

 then see this Blight on the wing ; it has just the look of a bit 

 of cotton, or a downy seed, floating in the air, and is driven by 

 every breath of wind quite as readily. 



' If you catch and examine it, you will find it to be just like 

 the plant-louse which infests our rose-trees, &c. ; but, unlike 

 all other plant-lice, it is clothed and muffled up with cotton- 

 wool in such quantities, that you would at first have no more 

 idea that the lump contained an insect than that the mass of 

 clothes on a stage-coach box in winter contained a man. Some 

 folks wonder what can be the use of so much clothing ; I am 

 not much of a theorist, but I should guess that the vermin 

 came from the torrid zone, and nature kindly furnishes this 

 garment to protect them from the cold of our climate. 



' These Blights wander wherever the wind pleases to carry 

 them ; and if bad luck should drive one of them against the 

 branch of an apple-tree, there it will stick, creep into a crack 

 in the bark, bring forth its young, and found a colony. The 



