HOMOPTERA. 309 



The larva is a flat, scale-like insect, and the pupa, 

 which is quiescent, remains covered by the larva skin. 



It is calculated that the descendants of one pair of 

 Aleyrodes may amount to 200,000 in a single year, the 

 little patriarchs possibly living to see them all ! 



The third and last section of Homoptera, MONOMERA, 

 contains only the curious family known as Scale insects, 

 Bark-Lice, or Mealy-Bugs. 



The reader may often have remarked, fixed, limpet- 

 like, on the stems and branches of vines and other trees, 

 a convex brown scale of the size and shape of a small 

 Ladybird, and from under the edge of which a whitish sub- 

 stance appears, but with no sign of head, legs, horns, or 

 even of rings or joints. This is the dead body of a mother 

 Coccus, or Scale insect, and on its removal from the tree 

 the whole convex space below it will be found occupied 

 by the white mealy exudation resembling that produced 

 by some of the Homopterous insects, embedded in which 

 are numerous active young Cocci with two long tails. 



" By the end of July the young quit the body of their 

 parent, and ascend to the extremity of the young 

 branches ; there they affix themselves by their rostrum, 

 gradually increase in size, and lose their anal setse, as 

 well as their former activity. In this state they remain 

 through the winter, without any diversity of appearance 

 indicative of the sexes ; and it is not till the following 

 April that this is first perceived, by the further increased 

 growth of the females, and by the males assuming the 

 pupa state, which is quiescent, with the limbs arranged 

 upon the breast, the fore-legs being directed forwards a 

 peculiarity not occurring in other insects."* The males 



Coccus Aceris. From. Westwood's Introduction. 



