INSECTS 219 



Why should they do this ? The female aphids lay their 

 shiny black, oval eggs in the ground during the fall months. 

 The little brown ants find these, carry them to their under- 

 ground homes, and keep them safely through the winter. 

 They often carry the eggs out into the sunshine during the 

 warm part of the day and back into the burrows at night. 

 These eggs hatch in the early spring into young aphids. 

 The ants at once place these on the roots of smart weeds. 

 When the corn is beginning to grow, the ants place the 

 aphids on the corn roots from which they suck the juices 

 with their sharp sucking tubes. The ants get their pay 

 for all this work in the form of honey dew which the aphids 

 throw out. 



Each aphid that hatches from an egg is called a stem 

 mother. In less than a month this stem mother begins to 

 reproduce young. All these are females which in a month's 

 time begin also to produce young. So in less than two 

 months the stem mother may become the ancestor of 

 thousands of young lice. This goes on all summer. Most 

 of these aphids are wingless. Once in a while there is a 

 generation that has wings. These fly away to some other 

 part of the field, or to another field. Some of them drop 

 to the ground, and are found by ants who carry them at 

 once to the corn roots. In the fall a brood of true males 

 and females is produced. These females are the ones 

 that deposit eggs for the next year's crop of aphids. You 

 can readily see why the destruction of the ants' homes is to 

 be encouraged. 



One of the methods employed to destroy these pests is 

 to break up the ground as early as possible in the spring, 

 and then before corn planting go over it once or twice with 



