30 A TOUR. BOUND MT GABDEIt. 



in the course of a day; that is to say, a volume ten or twelve 

 times equal to its own body. A single aphis which, at the 

 beginning of the warm weather, would bring into the world 

 ninety aphides, which ninety, twelve days after, would each 

 produce ninety more, would be, in the fifth generation, 

 author of five biUions, nine hundred tod four millions, nine 

 thousand aphides — which is a tolerable amount. Now, one 

 aphis is, in a year, the source of twenty generations. I very- 

 much doubt whether there would be room for them upon all 

 the trees and all the plants in the world. The whole earth 

 would be given up to aphides; but this fecundity, of which 

 there are so many examples in nature, need not alarm us. 

 One poppy plant produces thirty-two thousand seeds, one 

 tobacco plant, three hundred and sixty thousand; each of 

 these seeds producing in its turn thirty-two thousand, or 

 three hundred thousand — would you not think that, at the 

 end of five years the earth would be entirely covered with 

 tobacco and poppies ? A carp lays three hundred and fifty 



thousand eggs at once. But life and death are nothing but 

 transformations. Death is the aliment of life. These aphides 

 are the game that nourishes other insects, which in turn form 

 the food of the birds we eat. Then we are returned to the 

 elements, and serve as manure to the grass and the flowers, 

 which will produce S.nd feed other aphides. 



We need not go far to seek for the enemies of the aphides. 



