APPLE XEATESj APHIS LIONS — FOOD 'Wl-IEN YOUNG. 73 



relates (Journal Royal Agricultural Society, iii. 62) that having 

 enclosed two of them in a box with a caterpillar three- fourths of 

 an inch long, one overcome and devoured the other and then 

 sucked the juices out of the caterpillar, leaving only the skins of 

 his victims remaining. In the same connection, he says these 

 larvae " begin to feed upon the Aphides as soon as they escape 

 from the egg." Such being the current account of the larvse, I 

 was surprised at meeting with their eggs in abundance upon trees 

 which were wholly free from Aphides, and which had none of 

 these insects established anywhere in their vicinity. The small 

 apple tree which was stocked with so many hundred eggs had no 

 lice or other insects upon it or near by it, that I could discover. 

 And still more Avas I surprised on hatching some of these larvffi 

 from their eggs, and putting both old and newly born plant-lice into 

 the vials with tlaem, to find that they died of starvation, utterly 

 refusing to touch the lice or tode,vour each other. In one instance' 

 a hungry young aphis- lion was noticed to cautiously approach a 

 louse whic.h was standing still, and grasp one of her- feet between 

 his jaws. The louse instantly pulled her foot away, whereupon 

 the Aphis-lion drew back in evident fear, as though expecting the 

 aphis would pounce upon and destroy him. Had it been a spider 

 he could not have showed more alarm. Repeated experiments 

 produced the same results — the infant larvae dying of starvation 

 ■with young and tender plant-lice wandering around them. At 

 length, the middle of July I found upon a leaf a cluster of insect's 

 eggs of a briek red color, and a half-grown aphis-lion standing 

 witli his jaws sunk into one of them, sucking out its contents, 

 three eggs in the group having been already exhausted, nothing 

 remaining of them but the empty clear and glass-like shells. 

 Every observer knows it is not rare on meeting with a cluster of 

 the eggs of insects to find some of them which are mere empty 

 transparent shells, but I believe it has never been noticed before 

 that it is young aphis-lions which thus destroy these eggs. 



The leaf above alluded to was secured with its contents and 

 placed in a vial. Only two or three more of the eggs were sucked, 

 when they became too old for the use of the aphis-lion, and he 

 remained without food for a time. Six days after they were 



