26 THE AGRICULTURAL TESTS OF INDIA, 



as the death-watch, from its making a tapping noise like 

 the ticking of a watch. They feed on old dry wood, etc. 

 See Book-worm. 



Anthrenus. See Coleoptera ; Dermestidre. 



Ants are great destroyers of seeds, fruits, and sugars, 

 Formica saccharivora, the sugar ant, is supposed to get at 

 the saccharine juices of the sugar-cane. The red ant, a 

 species of Myrmica, bites severely. They avoid turmeric 

 powder. They can be attracted into a cocoa-nut shell 

 with the kernel in it, and destroyed. Formica gigas, an 

 ant of the East Indies, has a female an inch long. The 

 Dimya, or great red ant of Ceylon, bites with intense 

 ferocity, and the bite of the Kaddiya, another species, is 

 much dreaded. 



Aphidse or plant-lice are to be seen on almost every 

 plant in the field and garden, and from their numbers 

 cause great injury to cultivated plants. One British 

 species is the hop-fly, Aphis humuli ; another of Europe 

 is the destructive vine blight, Phylloxera vastatrix. They 

 live on the leaves and tender shoots of trees, shrubs, and 

 herbaceous plants, which they pierce in order to suck out 

 the juices. Some of the aphides which reside in cases 

 are small Hemiptera, belonging to the subdivision Homo- 

 ptera, and to the family of the Hymenelytra. 



The aphides multiply enormously. Eeaumur cal- 

 culated that five generations proceeding from a single 

 mother, if no obstacle intervened, might give rise to 

 the astounding number of 5,904,900,000 individuals, 

 and some of them cause great loss to growing crops. 

 One of the most curious of their cases is that which is 

 known as the Chinese gall, from Aphis Chinensis, Bell. 

 This case grows on the leaves of Distylium racemosum, 

 Zucc. t a large tree of Japan, belonging to the family Ham a- 



