PLANT-LICE DESTEOYERS. 
247 
the common potato plant-lice, they may always be found. 
It is amusing, however, that both of these kinds of insects 
should have been charged with the same fault, one having 
no more to do with producing the disease than the other. 
There are some lady-birds, of a very small size, and black¬ 
ish color, sparingly clothed with short hairs, and sometimes 
with a yellow spot at the end of the wing-covers, whose 
vouno- are clothed with short tufts or flakes of the most 
o 
delicate white down. These insects belong to the genus 
Scymilus., which means a lion’s whelp, and they well merit 
such a name, for their young, in proportion to their size, are 
as sanguinary and ferocious as the most savage beasts of 
prey. I have often seen one of these little tufted animals 
preying upon plant-lice, catching and devouring, with the 
greatest ease, lice nearly as large as its own body, one after 
another, in rapid succession, without apparently satiating its 
hunoier or diminishino; its activity. 
The second kind of plant-lice destroyers are the young of 
the golden-eyed lace-winged fly, Chrysopa perla^‘^ (Plate III. 
Fig. 8). This fly is of a pale green color, and has four 
wings, resembling delicate lace, and eyes of the brilliancy of 
polished gold, as its generical name implies; but notwith¬ 
standing its delicacy and beauty, it is extremely disgusting 
from the offensive odor that it exhales. It suspends its eggs, 
by threads, in clusters beneath the leaves where plant-lice 
abound. The young, or larva, (Plate III. Fig. 9; Fig. 10, 
cocoon,) is a rather long and slender grub, provided with 
a pair of large curved and sharp teeth (^jaws)^ moving later¬ 
ally, and each perforated with a hole, through which it sucks 
the juices of its victims. The havoc it makes is astonishing; 
for one minute is all the time it requires to kill the largest 
plant-louse, and suck out the fluid contents of its body. 
Tlie last of the enemies of plant-lice are the maggots or 
[12 Chrysopaperla is not fonnd in this country; probablv C. eurypiern. Rurm., 
or some other species common to New England, will be found destructive of tlic»e 
pernicious plant-lice. — Uhler.] 
