HONEY-DEW 163 



four years running. But as soon as the cold weather begins 

 to set in, perfect male and female insects are produced by 

 the last swarm of parthenogenetic mothers ; and these true 

 females, after being fertilised, lay the eggs which remain 

 through the winter, and from which the next summer's 

 broods have to begin afresh the wonderful cycle. Thus, 

 only one generation of aphides, out of ten or eleven, con- 

 sists of true males and females : all the rest are false 

 females, producing young by a process of budding. 



Setting aside for the present certain special modifica- 

 tions of this strange cycle which have been lately described 

 by M. Jules Lichtenstein, let us consider for a moment 

 what can be the origin and meaning of such an unusual 

 and curious mode of reproduction. 



The aphides are on the whole the most purely inactive 

 and vegetative of all insects, unless indeed we except a few 

 very debased and degraded parasites. They fasten them- 

 selves early in life on to a particular shoot of a particular 

 plant ; they drink in its juices, digest them, grow, and 

 undergo their incomplete metamorphoses ; they produce 

 new generations with extraordinary rapidity ; and they 

 vegetate, in fact, almost as much as the plant itself upon 

 which they are living. Their existence is duller than that 

 of the very dullest cathedral city. They are thus essen- 

 tially degenerate creatures : they have found the conditions 

 of life too easy for them, and they have reverted to some- 

 thing so low and simple that they are almost plant-like in 

 some of their habits and peculiarities. 



The ancestors of the aphides were free winged insects ; 

 and, in certain stages of their existence, most living species 

 of aphides possess at least some winged members. On 

 the rose-bush, you can generally pick off a few such larger 

 winged forms, side by side with the wee green wingless 

 insects. But creatures which have taken to passing most 



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