THE ATHIDES. , 29 



rest, takes its rank, and plunges its little trunk into the 

 green skin of the rose-tree. There issue thus ahout a 

 hundred from a single mother, ■who all fall in regularly below 

 their predecessors, and begin to eat. In ten or eleven days 

 they change their skins four times ; on the twelfth day, in 

 their turn, they begin to produce little ones who take their 

 rank, and themselves become prolific towards the twelfth day 

 from their birth. The aphides of the poppy are more pre- 

 cocious; in seven or eight days they have changed tieir 

 vestments four times, and enjoyed what I should call the 

 happiness- of being parents, if they were not quite indifierent 

 about the matter. 



But, my good friend, you will say, upon reading this' 

 passage of my journey, there is an important deficiency here: 

 you profess to describe the lives of these aphides, and you 

 don't say a word of their loves or their nuptials. I have 

 here, you will add, an immense advantage over you. I 

 relate to you, of every nation, a thousand whimsical or curious 

 ceremonies connected with marriage. Yes, my excellent 

 friend, I may answer, I could remind you of the loves of 

 those two spiders, which, when starting for my journey, I 

 fell in with in the corner of my window; but my present 

 business is only with aphides. Aphides are acquainted with 

 neither love nor hymeneals : aphides eat and make little ones, 

 exactly in the manner of Mother Gigogne, who so dehghted 

 our childhood. Nature has taken the fancy to free herself, 

 with regard to aphides, from the general law of reproduction. 

 Don't, however, imagine that she shrinks from the diflBculty 

 on account of the smallness of these animals. There are 

 other animals which can only be distinguished with the assis- 

 tance of a microscope, which, in this respect, come within 

 the genei-al rule. Notwithstanding the admu-ation which 

 the study of insects must create, you must not let this 

 admiration be exercised upon their greater or smaller size. 

 Great and small are only such with relation to ourselves; 

 and when we express astonishment at seeing a perfection in 

 the oi-gans of the invisible cheese-mite, equal to those of the 

 ox or the elephant, it is a false feeling, arising from a false 

 idea. 



One of these aphides will produce nearly twenty young ones 



