THE APHIS. 37 



and brilliant as a precious stone. Turn it up : its under side 

 is of a still more beautiful colour; it is another precious 

 stone, more violet than the ruby, more red than the amethyst. 

 The cetonia, or rose-beetle, lives scarcely anywhere but in 

 roses. A rose is its house and its bed. It feeds on roses. 

 When it has eaten its house, it flies away in search of another, 

 but it prefers white roses to aU the rest. If by chance you 

 find it upon another rose, which is rarely the case, neither its 

 abode nor its bed are to its mind. It would inspire you with 

 the same pity that you would feel for a ruined banker, obliged 

 to dwell in the fourth story, and to eat soup and bouilli, as 

 his only banquet. It feels sad and humiliated by it; but 

 still, breathing creatures must live. There are people who 

 resign themselves to a worse fate than this. 



Twenty flies of difierent species and colours, are to be found 

 upon difierent parts of the rose-tree ; but I pay no attention 

 to them — they are there by chance. They travel as you do; 

 they trifle as I do. I only take heed of the natives of the 

 country: I shall meet with the others elsewhere. We are 

 not yet ready to quit our rose-tree ; for strange things are 

 going on in it at this moment. 



Where are you, my dear friend 1 I have no idea where ; 

 but I very much doubt if the country in which you are 

 sojourning be as smiling as my rose-tree; and, particularly, 

 whether the inhabitants be as handsome, brilliant, and happy 

 as the inhabitants of my rose-tree. And is it nothing to see 

 living beings happy? But, to a certainty, you are viewing 

 nothing so extraordinary as that which I see at this mo- 

 ment. 



At the extremities of the young shoots of the rose-tree are 

 myriads of very small insects, of a reddish green, which en- 

 tirely cover the branch, and seem motionless: they are 

 aphides or vine-fretters, which are born within a line or two 

 of the place where they now are, and which never venture to 

 travel one inch in the course of their lives. They have a 

 little proboscis, which they plunge into the epidermis of the 

 branch, and by means of which they suck certain juices 

 which nourish them. They will not eat the rose-tree. There 

 are more than five hundred assembled upon one inch of the 

 branch, and neither foliage nor branch seems to sufier much. 



