Object* for the Microscope. 109 



many as 5,904,900,000 descendants. The fact that these 

 are produced by females without more than one impregna- 

 tion throughout nine generations long perplexed our natu- 

 ralists. Bonnet isolated females most carefully, and obtained 

 nine generations in three months. It is now ascertained 

 that certain females couple and lay eggs only in the 

 autumn, and that throughout spring and summer the young 

 ones are produced alive by a process of gemmation from 

 what are called Nurses. 



All through the winter one solitary female Aphis, which 

 I had placed in my bedroom window on the leaf of a tulip, 

 continued to present tne with pretty little pink-eyed stag- 

 gering things, until the whole plant was covered with them ; 

 and very curious it was to see the small Aphis keep close 

 to its mother's side for some hours, whilst she seemed 

 tenderly to caress it with her long antennae, until another 

 required her care, and this one was able to join the group 

 of sisters at a little distance, whose tiny suckers were 

 plunged into the juices of my Van Tromp. 



For an account of their enemies and our avengers, see 

 Hymenoptera, Aphidius avena. 



APHROPHORA, OR CUCKOO-SPIT. 



I suppose all florists will like to have this slide, because 

 they so well know a certain frothy substance which abounds 

 on their Carnation plants, Lychnis, Rose-trees, and Willows, 

 in which sits a little green creature with red eyes ; a soft, 

 frightened, innocent-looking little larva, which I never could 

 help covering again with the white froth if I had blown it 

 aside for a moment. And this was the defence of the young 

 Aphrophora we are now looking at : it passed from that 

 larva into a pupa, and then into this perfect state with wings 

 and wing-cases, with a long sucking tube, which pierced the 

 stems of our flowers and dried up the plant by abstracting 

 the sweet fluids needful to its growth. Observe the mottled 

 wing-case, all of uniform texture, which shows it to belong 

 to the second division of Hemiptera, called Homoptera ; the 

 wing with longitudinal nerves forked at the tip. The legs, 

 which leap wonderfully high, are remarkably circled at each 



