172 
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
true generators of that heavenly sweat, or saliva of 
the stars, concerning which Pliny the Younger 
wrote so learnedly. And they are many tribes — 
green, purple, brown, isabelline ; but all are one 
nation, and sacred to that fair god whom the Carian 
water-nymph loved not w^isely but too well. For, 
albeit the children of an ancient union, they marry 
not nor are given in marriage, yet withal multiply 
exceedingly, so that one (not two) may in a single 
season produce a billion. And at last, won back 
from the cold god to his hot mother, they know 
love and wedlock, and die like all married things. 
These are the Aphides — sometimes unprettily 
called plant-lice, and vaguely spoken of by the 
uninformed as " blight " — and they nourish them- 
selves on vegetable juices, that thin green blood 
which is the plant's life. 
This, then, is the fruit which the birds have 
come to gather. In June is their richest harvest ; 
it is more bountiful than September, when apples 
redden, and grapes in distant southern lands are 
gathered for the wine-press. In yon grey wall at 
the end of the lawn, just above the climbing rose- 
bush, there are now seven hungry infants in one 
small cradle, each one, some one says, able to 
consume its own weight of insect food every day. 
I am inclined to believe that it must be so, while 
trying to count the visits paid to the nest in one 
