Aphides of the Oak. Two of the large brown Aphis quercus, with their 

 curious suckers, and another species of the oak with the wood Ant, Formica 

 rufa y in search of honey-dew, magnified. 



THE WOOD-ANT AND THE APHIDES. 



N the midst of an oak wood stands a village or 

 scattered group of rustic habitations. These 

 are curiously excavated in the earth, above 

 which rise their dome-like roofs, thatched in a 

 peculiar manner, with pieces of stick and straw, 

 and each is the common abode of a large community of various 

 ranks and orders. In one of these sylvan dwellings there lived, 

 and perhaps lives still, a good sort of body, a female member 

 of the working class, who set a perfect pattern of industry. 

 Often at work, not only from morn till eve, but from eve till 

 dewy morn, she had turned, as it were, the summer into one 

 long day, and seemed to think that she had thereby acquired a 



