66 HOP-FLY. 



sap of plants is drawn up. I have sometimes seen this 

 sucker so long as to pass under the breast and legs, and 

 reach a considerable distance behind the body, but it is not 

 generally so. All blights infest the young and juicy 

 shoots, and leaves of plants, for the purpose of sap-suck- 

 ing ; and the plants honoured by their operations forthwith 

 play the most amusing and incredible vagaries ; bearing 

 blossoms instead of leaves, leaves instead of blossoms; 

 twisting into corkscrews stems which ought to be straight, 

 and making straight as sticks those which, as the scarlet- 

 runner and hop, ought to twine ; sometimes, as in the 

 peach, making the leaves hump up in the middle, and 

 causing the tree to look as though it had a famous crop of 

 young fruit; making apple-trees bear blossoms on their 

 roots, and causing roots to grow out of their young shoots ; 

 and, by tormenting orchards in this way, preventing the 

 fruit from ripening, and making it woolly, tasteless, and 

 without juice. It is amusing to see with what regularity 

 the blights station themselves on the young shoots of the 

 guelder-rose, crowding so close together that not a morsel 

 of the rind is to be seen, and not unfrequently forming a 

 double tier, or two thicknesses; the poor sprig losing its 

 formal, unbending, upright position, and writhing itself 

 into strange contortions. 



Blights are of all colours,* but green is their most fa- 

 shionable hue ; those of broad-beans are black as soot, and 

 velvety, and these, if attended to, do but little harm; 

 they cluster at the very top, and each bean should be top- 

 ped just below the blight, and the top carried away and 



* Until lately the species of Aphis have not been technically described by 

 entomologists : Mr. Walker is now publishing descriptions in successive num- 

 bers of the Zoologist.' #. N. 



