180 APHIS-EATING LADY-BIRDS. 



Aphides make for themselves, it is true, a few interested 

 friends, while, on the other hand, they owe to their possession 

 a host of devouring enemies. 



Keaumur designates the race of Aphides as " the very corn" 

 sown for the use of their more powerful insect brethren ; but 

 as animate creatures, as well as gregarious green-leaf grazers, 

 they have been considered with more propriety, as the oves and 

 boves, the flocks and herds, of those which seem permitted to 

 hold them in possession. Foremost among these Aphidophagi, 

 or feeders upon Aphides, we must rank the Lady-Bird. Inno- 

 cent as she looks, that misnamed Vache d Dieu, instead of 

 grazing innocently on the fruits of the earth, loves nothing 

 better than to stuff under her scarlet mantle, carcass after 

 carcass of Aphis lamb or mutton. Even before she puts on 

 the scarlet, and while yet in her own tender youth, she is, if 

 possible, still more given to inordinate excess in the same 

 living article of animal food. In other words, while she is yet 

 a flat, lead-coloured, six-legged Grub, instead of a rotund 

 crimson-painted beetle, she fairly fattens upon Aphides. 

 Wherever these abound, whether in hop-ground, bean-field, or 

 rosary, there are Lady-birds gathered together ; and in all such 

 places, they do the cultivator more good by their united appe- 

 tites, than he can do for himself by his utmost precautions 

 against " the Fly." Numerous are the winged tribes called 

 Aphidivorous or Aphis-eating Flies, because in their first stage 

 of being, and sometimes in their last, it is with them at every 



