The Cows that Ants Milk 



5 



after, most aphides (and especially all the summer 

 crops or generations that appear with such miracu- 

 lous rapidity on our loses and fruit-trees) are 

 poor fatherless creatures ; waifs and strays, budded 

 out vegetatively like the 

 shoots of a plant. 



About this strange 

 retrogressive mode of 

 reproduction, however, 

 I shall have more to 

 tell you in due time 

 by-and-by ; for the pre- 

 sent, we will confine 

 ourselves to the im- 

 mediate history of the 

 autumn brood, which 

 is regularly produced in 

 the legitimate fashion, 

 as the result of an or- 

 dinary insect marriage 

 between perfectly de- 

 veloped males and 

 females. As October 

 approaches, a special 

 generation of such per- 

 fect males and females 

 is produced by the un- 



wedded summer green-flies ; and the females of 

 this brood, specially told olf for the purpose, lay 

 the winter eggs, which are destined to carry on the 

 life of the species across the colder months, when 



NO. 2,— WORN-OUT MOTHER — 

 l.AVINC IIKR LAST E<;r.. 



