SPINNING MITES. 



99 



CASE leaf; and under this shelter a colony, consisting of many ot 

 both sexes in maturity, and young in all their ages, feed and 

 multiply with rapidity. The plant soon shows the influence of 

 their presence in its sickly yellow hue : the sap is sucked by 

 myriad insect mouths from the vessels of the leaf, its pores are 

 choked by excremental fluids, and the gardener mourns the ineffi- 

 cacy of his remedies and the loss of his cherished flowers. The 

 mode in which they feed is by eating their way into the leaf with 

 their nipping mandibles (shewn in the woodcut), and then plung- 

 ing in its barbed sucker and sucking the juice. 



The tgg of this mite is spherical, colourless, and proportionably 

 large. The larva which comes from it is minute, transparent, and 

 in shape not unlike the parent; but it has six legs only, and 

 creeps very slowly. M. Duges says that it undoubtedly passes 

 through the immovable nymph or pupa state before the full com- 

 plement of legs is acquired. M. Duges believes that these mites 

 pass the winter under stones, concealing themselves there when 

 the infested leaves have fallen. In a garden near Paris he found 

 several individuals thus concealed in the month of October; they 

 were of a uniform brick-red colour, and had lost as yet none of 

 their agility, nor of their spinning power ; and on them he ob- 

 served most distinctly the secreting papilla of the thread. 



The leaves which are attacked have a languishing air ; they are 

 yellowish or greyish above, with some patches of a lighter shade, 

 forming a kind of marbling ; their edges are slightly folded back, 

 and as if they were slightly rolled on the under side ; the lower 

 side is whitish and slightly shiny. 



If in that state we examine with the microscope the under side 

 of a leaf, we find hundreds of individuals of all ages, as well as 

 the eggs, pasted to the warped stuff on the leaf. 



The remedies that have been found by our horticulturists most 

 effectual against such enemies as the red spider are various pre- 

 parations of soap, sulphur, and quassia water ; sulphur being the 

 active principle and most efficient agent. Gishurst Compound, 



