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IRIS BED IN A HERTFORDSHIRE GARDEN. 



INSECT ENEMIES AND FRIENDS. 

 By G. S. Saunders. 



BEFORE giving an account of the various insects that attack plants in gardens, 1 

 think it will be well to insert a short general description of insects, as so many 

 persons, including some first-rate horticulturists, are very ignorant of all that 

 appertains to entomology, even of such a very elementary fact as that a caterpillar 

 does not lay eggs. A certain amount of knowledge of the life histoiy and formation of the 

 various kinds of insects will enable persons to apply remedies with greater success than 

 would otherwise be possible. The word " insect," in common parlance, denotes almost 

 any small living creature. This is, of course, by no means true, as will be seen presently. 

 To begin with the life history. The perfect female lays eggs, from these are hatched 

 larva? (caterpillars, grubs, etc.), which, when full grown, become chrysalides, and from which 

 the perfect insects emerge ; so that there are four distinct stages — the egg, larva, chrysalis, 

 and perfect insect. With butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, ants, bees, and wasps, these 

 changes or transformations are well-marked, the caterpillar, grub, or maggot, which is 

 hatched from the egg, being unlike its parents or the chrysalis. With other insects — such 

 as green fly, scale insects, cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, bugs, earwigs, and thrips — the 

 transformations are not clearly marked, though they exist, for the newly-hatched insect is 

 more or less like its parents, and, at everv change of skin, the resemblance becomes more 

 evident. When first hatched from the egg there is no appearance of wings, but when the 

 chrysalis state is reached the rudiments of wings are visible ; but in this state the insect 

 is very active, and does not become dormant, as it were, like a chrysalis. 



When the insect emerges from the chrysalis it is in its mature or perfect 

 state, and can then propagate its species, which it was unable to do before. A 

 typical perfect insect has four wings and six legs, but in some there is only one 



