STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
835 
aphis, its Astonishing fecundity. 
females,—these having the wings in a rudimentary state, and 
appearing like small scales appressed to the sides of the body. 
I have never yet seen a male of this species. The males will be 
readily distinguished from the females. Both the winged and 
wingless females have a short, tail-like process at the end of the 
body, which is the ovipositor or tube through which the young 
are passed. The males will b6 destitute of this tail-like appendage. 
This insect has a slender, sharp-pointed bill or trunk, which it 
holds under its breast when it is not in use. With this it punc¬ 
tures the leaves and stalks of the grain and sucks their juices- 
It therefore has no occasion to leave the particular plant on 
which it is born, as, till the grain is becoming ripe and juiceless, 
it always has an ample store of nourishment directly at its feet. 
Hence it has no use for wings to carry it, like other insects, from 
place to place in search of food. It needs wings only to enable 
it to emigrate to fields of grain which are unoccupied, in order 
to found its colonies in them. Only a small portion of these in¬ 
sects, therefore, acquire wings. These fly away from the winter 
grain to plant their race upon the spring-sowed wheat and oats. 
Those which have no wings and remain where they are born, are 
much more prolific than those which have wings and wander 
abroad. By enclosing them separately in vials, I found the 
winged females quite uniformly gave birth to two young lice in 
a single night, whilst the wingless ones produced four in the same 
time. We frequently see young lice produced in the day time, 
but fewer appear to be born then than during the night. The 
winged ones are also much slower in coming to maturity. I 
placed several young lice the morning after they were born upon 
some grain growing in a flower-pot, and on the third morning 
afterwards, I found four little ones around each of them, showing 
that the wingless ones come to maturity in three days. It will 
thus be seen with what prodigious rapidity these creatures mul¬ 
tiply. A single one producing four young daily, and these be¬ 
coming equally prolific when they are three days old, her descen' 
dants in twenty days will number upwards of two millions, and 
will be increasing at the rate of a million daily. This will serve 
to explain to us how these insects became so surprisingly numer¬ 
ous as they were in July and August. 
The latter part of June, when the grain has advanced so that 
the heads or Cars put forth, two most remarkable changes occur 
