PLANT-LICE DESTROYERS. 247 



the common potato plant-lice, they may always be found. 

 It is amusing, however, that both of these kinds of insects 

 should have been charged with the same fault, one having 

 no more to do with producing the disease than the other. 



There are some lady-birds, of a very small size, and black- 

 ish color, sparingly clothed with short hairs, and sometimes 

 with a yellow spot at the end of the wing-covers, whose 

 vouno- are clothed with short tufts or flakes of the most 



* O 



delicate white down. These insects belong to the genus 

 Scymfius, which means a lion's whelp, and they well merit 

 such a name, for their young, in proportion to their size, are 

 as sanguinary and ferocious as the most savage beasts of 

 prey. I have often seen one of these little tufted animals 

 preying upon plant-lice, catching and devouring, with the 

 greatest ease, lice nearly as large as its own body, one after 

 another, in rapid succession, without apparently satiating its 

 hunger or diminishing its activity. 



The second kind of plant-lice destroyers are the young of 

 the golden-eyed lace-winged fly, Chrysopa perla 12 (Plate III. 

 Fig. 8). This fly is of a pale green color, and has four 

 wings, resembling delicate lace, and eyes of the brilliancy of 

 polished gold, as its generical name implies ; but notwith- 

 standing its delicacy and beauty, it is extremely disgusting 

 from the offensive odor that it exhales. It suspends its eggs, 

 by threads, in clusters beneath the leaves where plant-lice 

 abound. The young, or larva, (Plate III. Fig. 9 ; Fig. 10, 

 cocoon,) is a rather long and slender grub, provided with 

 a pair of large curved and sharp teeth (jaws^), moving later- 

 ally, and each perforated with a hole, through which it sucks 

 the juices of its victims. The havoc it makes is astonishing ; 

 for one minute is all the time it requires to kill the largest 

 plant-louse, and suck out the fluid contents of its body. 



The last of the enemies of plant-lice are the maggots or 



[ 12 Chrygnpa perla is not found in this country; probably C. eurypteri Rnrm., 

 fr some other species common to New England, will be found destructive of these 

 pernicious plant-lice. UHLEK.] 



