234 EYE SPY 



haps, completely encircling it, and thus remaining 

 for weeks, the full-grown aphis at last attaining a 

 length of about three-sixteenths of an inch. 



A similar brood is sometimes seen in profusion 

 on beech-trees and also on the apple-tree. But if 

 we imagine that because these insects are with- 

 out teeth they are therefore harmless, we are 

 greatly mistaken. What they lack in individual 

 effect they fully compensate for in numbers, and 

 the combined attack of a girdle of thousands of 

 these sucking beaks, for weeks absorbing the sap, 

 may often result in the death of the branch be- 

 yond them. 



Dr. Harris, in his admirable work on " Insects 

 Injurious to Vegetation," tells us that '' in Glou- 

 cestershire, England, so many apple-trees were de- 

 stroyed by these lice in the year 1810 that the 

 making of cider had to be abandoned. So in- 

 fested were many of the trees that they seemed, 

 at a short distance, as if they had been white- 

 washed." 



Other insects, such as the flea and the mos- 

 quito, are also possessed of similar " beaks for 

 ■sucking," but neither of these examples is a bug, 

 both being flies — the flea merely a wingless fly 

 with wondei'fully developed legs. Our entomolo- 

 gy tells us that a bug is a member of the Hemip- 

 tera, meaning " half-winged ;" the wings of the 

 typical bug, like the squash-bug, being transparent 



