NATURE 



['/an. 24, I J 



most of the meteors was blue, or the colour of electric light. A 

 number of the meteors curved suddenly round just before dis- 

 appearing. Numbers of meteors were seen dropping into black 

 clouds, others seen dropping out of them down to the horizon. 

 Mossvale, PaiJey, lanuary 14 Donald Cameron 



BRITISH APHIDES' 



ENTO.MllLOGISTS are fond of attaching themselves 

 to some special group of insects — bees, beetles, or 

 butterflies ; but there are very few, we believe, who take 

 an interest in collecting the winged or wingless forms of 

 the Aphides. One is very apt to overlook the value of 

 the work of a mere collector, but it comes home to us when 

 amid a group so large, and so important from an econo- 

 mic point of view, as this of the plant lice is, we find 

 only some half a dozen of our British naturalists collect- 

 ing specimens of the species or making observations on 

 the marvellously strange habits of their heterogeneous 

 forms. Under these circumstances it was most fortunate 

 that a society like the Ray Society was in existence, for 

 the number of those interested in the subject of the his- 

 tory of British Aphides would have been too miserably 

 small to have justified any publisher, no matter how ener- 

 getic, from publishing an account of these insects ; but, 

 thanks to the Ray Society, we have, as the works published 

 by them for their subscribers for the years 1875, 1877,1880, 

 and 1 8S3, four handsome octavo volumes by Mr. G. Bo wdler 

 Buckton, F.R.S., which seem well entitled to their desig- 

 nation of a " Monograph of the British Aphides." These 

 volumes, besides the text, contain over 140 plates, of 

 which ten are devoted to anatomical details, and the 

 rest to coloured portraits of the species both in their 

 immature and various mature forms, and in some few 

 instances there are representations of the various para- 

 sites which feed on them. It is to be specially noted 

 that these figures are both drawn and lithographed by 

 ■the author, and certainly a more interesting series of 

 life-like figures of Aphides is nowhere to be found. 



While it seems true that the Aphides are not general 

 favourites of the collector, it is also true that no group 

 of insects has attracted more attention. For nearly a 

 century and a half the mysteries of their growth and 

 development have been laboriously inquired into, and 

 the researches of R&umur and Charies Bonnet in the 

 eighteenth, and those of Huxley in this our nineteeth cen- 

 tury, have not exhausted all the marvels of these strange 

 forms. Their historv makes them in many ways attrac- 

 tive. Thus, to those interested in the details of embryo- 

 logy, these Aphides present questions for solution of the 

 greatest importance, an 1 concerning which there is still 

 no absolutely settled opinion. Even the brilliant inves- 

 tigations as to this branch of the subject by Hu.xley still 

 left work to be done. To the general naturalist they 

 present a source for abundant study— not only their 

 varied and often strange forms, but their curious habita- 

 tions and the defences which they seem to have against 

 liosts of different insect foes ; while to the practical 

 economist they have an immense interest when he thinks 

 that by their success in the struggle for life they cause 

 distress to human nations, often bringing about decrease 

 in the amount of our food material and an increase in the 

 amount of our taxation. To name the Hop Fly or the 

 Vine Aphis is to at once illustrate our meaning. 



It is not our intention to write a criticism on Mr. 

 Buckton's learned monogniph ; it pleases us better to 

 introduce it to our readers as a scientific work full of many 

 easily read and wonderful histories of our native species 

 of plant lice— one that the reader will not lay down in a 

 hurry when he once takes it up ; one in which, open where 

 he will, he shall find something in it to interest and 

 attract him. In order that we may in some measure 



' " Monoeraph of the Britiih Apliid=s." By Gejrge Uowdler Buckton, 

 F R S., &c. Four volumes ; beiug the volumes issued by the Ray Society 

 of London to their subscribers for the years 1875, 1877, 1880 and 1883. 



prove this we will give a brief sketch of the chief subject- 

 matter of these volumes. Passing over the disquisition 

 as to the origin and meaning of the word "aphis," we 

 have a general history of the group ; included under this 

 heading we find a sketch of their anatomy, an account of 

 the most noteworthy contributions to their history by the 

 early writers, and a sketch of what is known i.s to their 

 metamorphoses and their very strange reproduction. 

 This is followed by the classificatory portion, in which 

 full diagnoses are given of the genera and species. 



Mr. Buckton would account for the want of activity in 

 our entomologists in their study of this group by the 

 confusion into which the group has fallen with reference 

 to its synonomy. One species of Aphis possesses no less 

 than thirty synonyms, while in another case the same 

 name has been given to no less than six different species 

 of the group. There is this further difficulty in their 

 study, that the distinctive characters are far less marked 

 than in most other insects. As to colour, not only are 

 the young sometimes in this respect quite unlike their 

 parents, but their hues vary with the hour, and even the 

 adult forms may undergo as great a change in their tints 

 as the autumn leaves amongst which they nestle. 



The family itself belongs to the order of the Hemi- 

 ptera and to the sub-order Homoptera, where it is located 

 between the families Coccidae and Psyllidje. Among 

 the anatomical peculiarities it may be noted that the 

 winged forms are provided with no less than three dif- 

 ferent kinds of eyes — ocelli, compound eyes, and supple- 

 mentary eyes. The larvae of some have eyes ; in others 

 the eyes are quite rudimentary ; while in some subterra- 

 nean forms they are absent. Though all the winged forms 

 have ocelli, yet their nocturnal habits are not marked. All 

 the Aphides are suctorial in their habits ; as the source of 

 their food varies so does the structure of the mouth parts, 

 especially the rostrum and setae. In Stoinaphis quercis, 

 feeding in the alburnum of the oak, the rostrum is nearly 

 twice the length of the insect, and the set;e are much 

 longer ; and in the genera Lachnus and Schizoneura, in 

 the young forms, the rostrum projects beyond the end of 

 the abdomen, and is carried as if it were the tail of the 

 insect ; while in the young of Cherincs laricis the long 

 and delicate seta; are coiled into a spiral, which would 

 seem to act as a kind of spring cable by which the insect 

 moors itself so to its feeding ground that it is not easily 

 dislodged by the rough winds of early spring as they play 

 among the larch branches. The punctures are not made 

 by the rostrum, which seems only to act as a sheath, but 

 by the seta;, which can be seen to lance open a number 

 of the parenchymatous cells, and so cause a plentiful flow 

 of cell-contents. 



On the question as to the function of the cornicles, the 

 author does not agree with Kaltenbach that they are 

 organs connected with the respiratory apparatus, but 

 rather regards them as the external terminations of ex- 

 cretory ducts. As to honey-dew, the remarks of Kirby 

 and Spence, ascribing it to a secretion of .Aphides, is 

 accepted as true by almost all who have written on the 

 subject— including the author — though others, among 

 whom may be mentioned Liebig, Sir J. Hooker (1873), 

 Boussingault (1872), still combat this view. 



The chapter on the bibliography begins by alluding to 

 the work of the celebrated anatomist and philosophical 

 lens grinder, Leuwenhoek, in 1690, glances at that of 

 Reaumur (i737). Charids Bonnet (i779), I^e Geer (1778); 

 the more modern writings of Schrank, Hausmann, 

 Burmeister, Harting, Kaltenbach, Kyber, Morren, 

 Leuckart, von Siebold, Ratzeburg, and Koch among the 

 Germans ; Passerini among the Italians ; Signoret, Bal- 

 biani and Claparede among the French writers ; New- 

 port, F. Walker, Haliday, and Huxley among the English 

 writers on the subject. 

 Aphides are to be found almost everywhere throughout 

 I Britain. Some are hardy enough to thrive on the stony 



