777 
No. 145.] 
relates (Journal Royal Agricultural Society, iii. G2) that having 
enclosed two of them iu 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 larvae, 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 was I surprised on hatching some of these larvae 
from their eggs, and putting both old and newly born plant-lice into 
the vials with them, to find that they died of starvation, utterly 
refusing to touch the lice or to devour each other. In one instance 
a hungry young aphis lion was noticed to cautiously approach a 
louse which 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 brick red color, and a half-grown aphis-lion standing 
with 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 da} s after they were 
