782 
[Assembly 
crops of late years. A number of the small yellow grubs 
sufficient to destroy every kernel in a head of wheat would no 
more than suffice an aphis-lion for a single meal. And if these 
voracious creatures are usually so common as I have found them 
to be the present season, it would be an easy matter for a person 
who is familiar with them to gather such a number of the eggs 
and larvae as, scattered through a wheat-field infested by the 
midge, would greatly diminish the damage done by this insect. 
The larvae of different species of these insects differ consider¬ 
ably in their colors. They are mostly of a reddish-brown color, 
with a darker stripe in the middle, and are cream-colored along 
each side. They have bodies of a long narrow weasel-like form, 
wrinkled transversely, with six rather long legs anteriorly. But 
they may be distinguished from all our other insects and larvae by 
their two long slender jaws, curved like sickles, which project 
hoiizontally forwards from their heads. Along each side is a 
row of projecting points, one to each segment, from the ends of 
which several fine bristles radiate in all directions. Others have 
the whole of their backs covered with' rows of similar elevated 
points and radiating bristles, giving them a truly frightful ap¬ 
pearance. But these have the artifice to conceal themselves from 
view, by placing the empty skins of their victims between their 
radiating bristles, so that they adhere, and completely hide the 
insect from view. It is the skins of the woolly plant-lice which 
they mostly employ for this purpose. Thus covered they resem¬ 
ble a little mass of white down adhering to the bark of the apple 
tree, and at a short distance one of these insects thus covered can 
scarcely be distinguished from a colony of the Apple-tree blight, 
which is usually covered with a mass of down of similar size and 
appearance. Thus disguised they are able to approach their vic¬ 
tims without exciting their alarm and putting them to flight. It 
is in autumn that the species which thus cover themselves appear 
upon the apple trees. I have noticed none but the naked kinds 
without bristly backs in July and August. 
The Larv.e cast their skins soon after birth and often before they have taken any 
nourishment. No other moulting occurs, that I have observed, until they change to 
pupaa. When newly born the larva of the New-York Golden-eye is 0.05 long, soft 
and tender, long and narrow, with the opposite sides of the head and thorax straight 
