NATURAL HISTORY OF HARTING. 421 



the roof of a building, indeed this is the character of 

 nearly all the winged specimens of the order. Another 

 species, the Scarlet-hopper (Cercopis sanguinolenta, 

 now altered to vulnerata) is, on the contrary, a very- 

 pretty insect, upper wings bright red with transverse 

 black bands, and it is not at all uncommon in the 

 Park. In Padswood Copse we have more than once 

 shaken from the branches of the underwood the 

 curiously-formed Centrotus cornutus and Ledra aurita. 



The well-known family of Plant-lice (Aphides) is a 

 very numerous one, and the insects composing it may 

 be found on almost every species of plant in the parish. 

 Their office is to assist in checking the redundancy of 

 vegetation, and their wonderful powers of reproduc- 

 tion enable them to do this effectually ; indeed, if it 

 were not for the Lady-birds, the Aphis-lions, and nu- 

 merous parasites, to the attacks of which the aphides 

 are subject, these would become terribly destructive. 

 Some species have the faculty of secreting a sweet 

 fluid of which the ants are fond, and the latter may 

 frequently be seen associating with them for the pur- 

 pose of gratifying this partiality, the same secretion 

 may also be seen in little irregular shining patches on 

 the leaves of the plants they infest, and in this form 

 it is know as honey-dew. Curious that the saccharine 

 product of plants, which is the favourite food of innu- 

 merable insects, should be sought for and collected by 

 one tribe of social insects as an animal secretion, while 

 all the others resort direct to the flowers themselves 

 for it ! The most astonishing fact, however, in the 

 history of the aphides, is their anomalous mode of 

 reproduction. A single impregnation of each female 

 in the autumn, is sufficient for the fecundation of nine 

 or ten consecutive generations of other females, and it 

 is not till the latter 'end of the following summer that 

 other males are produced and another union of the 

 sexes is possible. 



The Scale Insects are the next to be noticed, and 



