STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
451 
hop-aphis. its anhitai. career. 
pale yellowish, with the feet and the ends of the thighs and of the shanks black. 
The antennae nearly equal the body in length and are black except towards 
their bases. The honey tubes are rather long, slender, and blackish towards 
their tips. The wings are transparent, with the stigma of a greenish gray 
color and the veins brown. 
Messrs. Kirby and Spence, in their Introduction to Entomology (American 
edition, p. 135,) speqk of the damage inflicted by this insect as follows: 
"Upon the presence or absence of Aphides, the crop of every year depends; 
so that the hop-grower is wholly at the mercy of these insects. They are the 
barometer that indicates the rise and fall of his wealth, as of a very important 
branch of tjie revenue, the difference in the amount of the duty on hops lieing 
often as much as £200,000 per annum, more or less, in proportion as this 
fly prevails or the contrary.” This statement forcibly shows what a direct 
interest our own government has in patronizing these investigations in which 
I am employed—this one little insect, in years when it is numerous, taking 
from the revenue of the British government half a million of dollars ! 
My own researches upon this insect are obviously too limited as yet, to 
enable me to give such a particular account of its habits and operations, as 
its importance merits. I therefore present the following history of the annual 
career which it runs, from an admirable article on the Hop, by J. M. Paine, 
Esq., in Morton’s Cyclopedia of Agriculture, vol. ii, p. 55. 
“The great destroyers of the hop crop, the Aphides, or long-winged flies, 
usually make their first appearance about the middle of May ; fresh detach¬ 
ments often follow up their first incursion, throughout the whole summer.— 
Whence they come is at present a mystery ; for, contrary to the vulgar opin¬ 
ion, the insects in the spring are viviparous ; but if in the autumn visitation, 
when the flies are very different in external appearance, there is a change also 
in their economy, and they become oviparous, some of the existing difficulties 
will be cleared up, and this would account for certain phenomena, and their 
consequences, which we have often witnessed, but could not explain, excepting 
on this hypothesis. 
“ As soon as the aphides settle upon the hops, they suck the under side of 
the leaves, and immediately deposit their young — the aphis louse. The lice, 
too, are viviparous, and they have the singular faculty of propagating their 
species within a few hours after their birth ; and in this manner many genera¬ 
tions aro produced without the intervention of the fully formed fly ; indeed up¬ 
on one hill of hops millions of lice are born and die, neither parents nor pro¬ 
geny having ever attained the condition of a perfect insect. 
1 ‘ When the first attack of these flies upon the hops is severe and early in 
the season, the growth of the plant is commonly stopped in the course of three 
or four weeks. If the attack be late — that is about midsummer, or after¬ 
wards, — the vine has then attained so much strength that it struggles on 
against the blight to its disadvantage, and the result is a total failure of the 
cro P last; for the leaves fall off, and the fruit branches being already form- 
ad, there is no chance of recovery. At this time, and in this condition, the 
stench from the hop plantations is most offensive. In an early blight, how- 
ev er, we have many instances recorded of extraordinary recoveries ; for these 
•Meets are remarkably suseeptiblo of atmospherical and electrical changes, 
