BLIGHT INSECTS. 73 



happen to notice one of those remarkable creatures ? Well then, 

 we can tell you that for every single Butterfly, you have seen 

 a thousand Aphides, and for every score of Wasps, a million of 

 Plant-lice. Not only have you seen, but scarcely a summer's 

 day has passed without your having destroyed them by dozens. 

 Your foot annihilates them on the grass. They die by your 

 hand on almost every flower-sprig you gather ; and with every 

 vase of sweets which you place upon your table, you consign 

 them, without a thought, to the bitter death of famine: so 

 important and fatal is the influence which you, and everybody, 

 are continually exercising over the destinies of Aphis existence, 

 little as you would seem to know about it ; although, perhaps, 

 you may be better acquainted with it by sight than you are by 

 name. However blind from indifference to the minutiae of 

 nature, have you not often, when about to pluck a rose-bud or 

 a piece of honeysuckle, almost started to find the one a green 

 mass of moving life, the other with leaves green no longer, 

 but turned black to the eye, and clammy to the touch ? You 

 perceive, in short, that what most people call a " blight," but 

 what naturalists only look on as a swarm of Aphides, has been 

 busy with your flowers before you, and turn away disgusted, 

 to seek for less contaminated sweets. 



Now suppose we look at the leaf-buds of a rose-bush, which, 

 early as it is, we shall find already occupied by Aphis tenantry, 

 such as have recently emerged from minute black eggs, de- 

 posited last autumn on the branches. These are all green, of 

 small size, and without wings, but later (towards the end of 

 May) a single flower-bud is likely to present us with two or 

 three kinds of these infesting sap-suckers, differing in size, 

 form, and colour. 



Now for our blight-disfigured rose-bud, which, instead of 

 encasing green and bursting red, displays nothing but a 

 moving multitude a conglomeration of Plant-lice, which, 

 taken en masse, is certainly no pleasing object. For all this, 

 the little winged animal which, as being more conspicuous 



