ANTS AND APHIS. 43 



promising trees are overrun with aphis and with 

 ants. We are doing everything that can be done 

 to check the plague, but with only a partial 

 success. I am told that ants do no harm, and, 

 indeed, are useful as against the aphis. I do not 

 know how this is. They seem to be most excel- 

 lent friends, and the more ants there are the more 

 the leaves curl up, and the more the aphis seems 

 to thrive. 1 Last year one Peach-tree was com- 

 pletely killed, and this year two of them are 

 looking very miserable. There has been no want 

 of care or attention, but the enemy increases 

 faster than we can destroy it. Is it a disease (so 

 to speak) in a particular tree, which spreads to 

 other trees ? Or is it a blight in the air, against 

 which we cannot guard ? And what remedy is 

 there when we have used tobacco-powder and 

 Gishurst Compound, and all in vain ? 



Two Fig-trees against the wall, in the sunniest 

 corners, are promising a full crop for this district ; 

 another Fig-tree of a smaller variety close by 

 bears nothing. The old Arabic proverb, which 



1 I have since learned that the fact of the ant and the aphis being 

 constantly together is well known ; and further, that a sweet juice 

 exudes from the aphis, on which the ant feeds. Pierre Huber 

 declares that the aphis is the milch-cow of the ant ; and adds, " Who 

 would have supposed that the ants were a pastoral p(0ple?" 



