SuhcocHnclla.'] clavicornia. 157 



somewhat elongate club ; thorax short, broadest behind ; elytra some- 

 what raised a little before middle; legs reddish-testaceous. L. 2^- 

 3 mm. 



Sixth ventral segment subtruncate in male, somewhat rounded in 

 female. 



By sweeping herbag'e in woods, lanes, &c. ; often found in moss in winter ; locally 

 couiiuon ; Shirley, Micklebam, Chatham, VVbitstable, Southend, &c. ; Hastings ; 

 Glanvilles Wootton ; Devon ; Swansea ; Barmouth ; Huntingdonshire ; apparently 

 very rare in the Midland counties, and not recorded from the Northumberland anil 

 Durham districts ; Filey, Yorkshire ; Lancaster, on Arundo phragmites ; Scotland, 

 rare, Solway and Tweed districts. 



This insect is found, according to Mulsant, on Saponaria officinalis^ 

 vetches, lucerne, clovers, and various other plants, and also on certain 

 trees ; it gnaws the parenchyma of the leaves, and makes marks on them 

 as with a four-toothed comb as might be expected from the formation of 

 the mandibles ; the larva lives on the same plants ; it is yellowish, of 

 somewhat elliptical shape, and more or less spinose, with a few dark 

 markings, and with the last segment furnished with a small nipple-like 

 anal appendage. 



COCCINELLID^ APHIDIPHAG-5;. 



The whole of the species belonging to this series are carnivorous, and 

 in all their stages feed as a rule on Aphides ; they are, therefore, of the 

 greatest service to the farmer and the gardener ; Coccinellidae are often 

 found in swarms on and about blighted fruit-trees, and many people 

 erroneously assign the blighted appearance of the trees to the beetles, the 

 true state of the case being that the beetles are attracted by the abun- 

 dant supply of their usual food ; in all probability no form of life, if we 

 except perhaps the very lowest forms such as the bacteria, has a greater 

 power of reproducing itself than the aphis ; the females are both 

 oviparous and viviparous, and one connection with the male suffices for 

 the production of broods for many generations ; the generations succeed 

 one another very rapidly, and Reaumur calculates that one aphis may be 

 the progenitor of the enormous number of 5,904,900,000 individuals 

 during tbe month or six weeks of her existence ; the whole of this 

 interesting question Avill be found fully discussed in Buckton's Monograph 

 of British Aphides, vol. i., pp. 76, &c. ; Professor Huxley (Linn. Trans., 

 vol, xxii., p. 215) makes a curious calculation, which is quoted by 

 Buckton ; he shows that, assuming that an aphis weighs as little as yo^-g- 

 of a grain, and that it requires a man to be very stout to weigh more than 

 two million grains, the tenth brood of Aphides alone, without adding the 

 products of all the generations which precede the tenth, would, if all the 

 members survived the perils to which they are exposed, contain more 

 ponderable substance than five hundred millions of stout men ; that is, 

 more than the whole population of China. Aphides largely increase in 

 sultry and cloudy woatlier ; henr-e has arisen the saying so commoii in 



