A NUMEROUS FAMILY 31 



sixty-four times, so that it becomes a bed of wheat 

 of a finger's depth over the whole earth. What 

 would it be if it had been multiplied ten times in- 

 >teud of doubled ! In like manner, after a few years, 

 the descendants of a first plant-louse, continually 

 multiplied tenfold, would be in straitened circum- 

 stances in this world. But there is the great reaper, 

 death, which puts an invincible obstacle to over- 

 crowding, counterbalances life in its overgrowing 

 fecundity, and, in partnership with it, keeps all 

 things in a perpetual youth. On a rosebush appar- 

 ently most peaceful there is death every minute. 

 But the small, the humble, and weak, are the habitual 

 pasture, the daily bread, of the large eaters. To how 

 many dangers is not the plant-louse exposed, so tiny, 

 so weak, and without any means of defense! No 

 sooner does a little bird, hardly out of the shell, dis- 

 cover with its piercing eyes a spot haunted by the 

 plant-lice, than, merely as an appetizer, it will swal- 

 low hundreds. And if a worm, far more rapacious, 

 a horrible worm expressly created and put into the 

 world to eat you alive, joins in, ah ! my poor plant- 

 lice, may God, the good God of little creatures, pro- 

 tect you; for your race is indeed in peril. 



"This devourer is of a delicate groen with a \\hite 

 stripe on its back. It is tapering in front, swollen 

 at the back. When it doubles itself up it takes the 

 shape of a tear-drop. They call it the ants' lion be- 

 cause of the ravages it makes in the stupid herd. It 

 establishes itself ainon.u: them. With its pointed 

 month, it s.-ixes one, the biggest, the plumpest; it 

 sucks it and throws away the skin, which is too hard 



