128 WAYS OF THE SIX-FOOTED 



theix work in destroying plant-lice which infest almost 

 every plant and tree that we try to cultivate and which 

 are the inveterate foes of our roses. 



However, there is little virtue in the intentions of 

 the aphis-lion. His highest aspiration is to find some- 

 thing that he may eat ; and not alone aphids but 

 every insect egg that he finds and every insect that 

 he can conquer helps to fill his insatiable little stomach. 

 His method of killing his prey is peculiar. Each of his 

 sickle-shaped jaws is composed of a mandible, with a 

 groove along its entire length and a maxilla fitting 

 over this groove, so as to make a tube one end of which 

 opens at the tip of the jaw and the other opening in 

 the creature's mouth. When he catches an aphid, he 

 thrusts these long, hollow weapons into its soft body 

 and lifts it high in the air, as if drinking a bumper, 

 while he sucks its blood through his tubular jaws 

 as a man would drink lemonade through two straws. 



Now we come to the problem that the mother Lace- 

 wing had to solve : If she merely laid her eggs on the 

 leaf in a group, the earliest hatched larva, in hunting 

 for something to satisfy his first hunger, would surely 

 turn cannibal and make his first meal off his unhatched 

 brothers and sisters. Little mother Golden-eyes is not 

 so frivolous and silly as her transparent beauty might 

 suggest. She has wisdom to solve her perplexing 



