Miscellaneous. 317 



tribe. The difficulty in the case of the hop-aphis has always been 

 to know where the eggs from which the flies proceed in spring, are 

 placed by the gravid females in autumn. This could not be on the 

 hop-plant, which dies down yearly to the roots. But the mystery 

 has been solved by Mr. Walker, who has found that it is on the 

 sloe-tree or black-thorn {Prunus spinosa) that the female deposits 

 her eggs in autumn, which are there hatched in spring, and the 

 second generation being produced with wings, flies to the hop- 

 plants and establishes itself on the leaves, which, owing to the well- 

 known rapid increase of these insects, it soon covers and exhausts of 

 the sap. Now if the hop-aphis does not deposit its eggs on any 

 other shrub or plant than the sloe, as Mr. Walker believes, it is 

 evident that, to secure the hops in any district from the hop-aphis, 

 it is only necessary to destroy all the sloe-trees, which, as they are 

 found chiefly in hedges, and there in no great number, would be no 

 difficult matter. And if, from the escape of a part of the sloe-trees, 

 and the flight of some of the hop-aphides from distant quarters, a 

 few of the female aphides were still found on the hop-plants in spring, 

 nothing would be easier, as I ascertained by experiments in hop- 

 grounds in Worcestershire in 1838*, than to clear them from every 

 one of these assailants, at a very trifling expense, by employing 

 women and children, by means of step-ladders, to crush every aphis 

 found, by pressing them and the leaf between the thumb and fore- 

 finger, so as to destroy the flies without injuring the texture of the 

 leaf. When it is considered that the extirpation of the hop-aphis 

 would in some years save 200,000/. to the revenue, and three or 

 four times as much to the hop-growers, it is evident that this is a 

 matter worth attention, and that the science which can efl*ect this 

 sa\'ing is no trifling one. — From the Address delivered by the Pre- 

 sident W. Spence, Esq., F.R.S., at the Anniversary Meeting of the 

 Entomological Society of London, Jan. 22, 1849. 



Description of a new Mexican Quail. By William Gambel. M.D. 



Ortyx thoracicus. With a full, somewhat pointed crest, the 

 feathers of which are black, obscurely mixed with dull brown and 

 rufous. Nape mottled with black and bright rufous, and traversed 

 by two interrupted white lines, which commence of a cinereous 

 colour about the front and pass over the eyes. Throat and cheeks 

 pale cinereous, each feather with a narrow black margin. Sides of 

 neck, breast and sides pale rufous ; deepest on sides of neck, where 

 the feathers have a few scattered black spots. Lower part of belly 

 and vent white. Under tail-coverts rusty white, mottled with black. 

 Tail very short and rounded, its colour dark brown, with freckled 

 irregular bars of rusty white. Lower part of back and upper tail- 

 coverts irregularly variegated with difl"erent shades of gray, fulvous 

 and black ; upper part of back dark rufous, the centres of the feathers 

 grayish, and traversed by fine, irregular, dusky lineations. Wings 

 and scapulars beautifully variegated with black, rufous and gray ; 



* Introd. to Entomology, 6th edit., vol. i. p. 149. 



