The Zoologist — September, 1869. 1839 



aUainmeiit of which T appeal to all entomologists who may happen to be in the suh. 

 alpine refjion at that time of the year. — Albeit Muller; Eaton Cuttage, South Nor- 

 wood, S.E., July 8, 1869. 



Aphides seen at Sea. — Ou Saturday raorningf, July 24tl), fluiin"; the Ocean Race 

 from Lowestoft to Hull, our cutter, when 6ve miles S.S.E. of the Newsand lightship, 

 and aliout thirteen miles from the Lincolnshire coast, ran through numerous bells of 

 {•ray water, varying from a few yards to some hundreds in breadth, and extending 

 both to port and starboard as far as the eye could reach. On examining a bucket of 

 this water I found the peculiar gray c<jlour due to myriads of aphides, with green 

 bodies and li^ht fragile wings, and that it was ihe extended wings of these little 

 insects that gave the thick pea-soup appearance to the water. The sea was at the 

 time comjaratively smooth, and within the gray belts the surface was constantly 

 broken and furrowed by the noses and fins of mackerel and pollack sucking down the 

 flies — John Cordeaux ; Great Cotes, Ulceby, Lincolnshire, July 26, 1869. 



Plague of Aphides. — With regard to the floating masses of dead aphides seen at 

 sea on the morning of the 24th of July off the liincolnshire coast, I have since ascer- 

 tained that about the same date this insect-scourge attacked the peas and vetches in 

 this district in such immense swarms as, had it not been for the advanced state of the 

 crops, to threaten their entire destruction. Myriads are now knocked from the plants 

 during the process of reaping and gathering ; and so thickly, in some cases, is the 

 ground covered that they may literally be gathered in handfulls. I well remember, 

 many years since, the advent of an extraordinary flight of ladybirds in this district: 

 as near as I recollect they did not extend far from the coast, but all along the 

 Humber embankment, and some short distance inland, lay as thick as hailstones after 

 a storm : the ground seemed everywhere strewn with the little creatures, and they 

 might very well have been swept up into heaps: the stems of ragwort and hemlock 

 were concealed, so thickly were they covered ; and along rails and gate-posts they 

 crawled by hundreds and thousands. — Id. 



Aphides in Lincolnshire. — With reference to the plague of aphides, which at the 

 present lime are doing so much damage to the crops in this district, I may further 

 remark that they have not altogether been permitted to devastate ouv pea and vetch 

 crop unmolested : their enemies are both numerous and enteiprising : first and fore- 

 most in the war of extermination comes the " many-wintered" rook and his family — 

 at this season usually so destructive to the corn crop ; but now his old bad habits 

 seem forgotten, or at least for the time laid aside, for 1 now see daily, as I pass 

 through the fields, hundreds of black heads peeping up from amongst the late-sown 

 vetches — wide-awake and trustless of peaceful apjiearances, ever on the watch for the 

 dreaded gun. It must be a new sensation to these poor rooks not to be fired into, or 

 disturbed by noisy rattle; but I know full well they are now all honest workers, day 

 by day, early and late, stripping the green fly from the young and lender shoots of the 

 vetch ; and so much do ihey relish their work, that hitherto it has not been necessary 

 to protect the fast-ripening grain ; T can find no stray heads scattered on bank or 

 pasture. With the rooks are associated flocks of starlings, and all equally well em- 

 ployed. But these are not all : during the last few days another foe to the aphides 

 has come into the field — less conspicuous, but not the less deadly. In each plot of 

 peas or lares, crawling over eveiy part of the plant, I now find astonishing numbers 

 of the larva of the ladybird ; in many cases averaging ten or twelve ou each plant, 



