THE LADIES’ FLORAL CABINET. 
38 
their birth. The aphides of the Poppy are more pre¬ 
cocious, for in seven or eight days they have changed 
their vestments four times, and produced their set of 
little ones. 
Nature has taken the fancy to free herself, with regard 
to aphides, from the general law of reproduction. Don’t, 
however, imagine that she shrinks from the difficulty on 
account of the smallness of these animals. There are 
other animals which can only be distinguished with the 
assistance of a microscope, which, in that respect, come 
within the general rule. Notwithstanding the admiration 
which the study of insects must create, you must not let 
this admiration be exercised upon their greater or smaller 
size. Great and small are only such with relation to our¬ 
selves ; and, when we express astonishment at seeing 
perfection in the organs of the invisible cheese-mite, 
equal to those of the ox or the elephant, it is a false feel¬ 
ing, arising from a false idea. 
One of these aphides will produce nearly twenty young 
ones in the course of a day ; that is to say, a volume ten 
or twelve times equal to its own body. A single aphis 
which, at the beginning of the warm weather, would 
bring into the world ninety aphides, which ninety, twelve 
days after, would each produce ninety more, would be, 
in the fifth generation, author of five billions, nine hun¬ 
dred and four millions, nine thousand aphides, which is 
a tolerable amount. Now, one aphis is, in a year, the 
source of twenty generations ; I very much doubt whether 
there would be room for them upon all the trees and all 
the plants in the world. The whole earth would be 
given up to aphides; but this fecundity, of which there 
are so many examples in nature, need not alarm us. 
One Poppy plant produces thirty-two thousand seeds, 
one Tobacco plant, three hundred and sixty thousand— 
each of these seeds producing in its turn thirty-two 
thousand, or three hundred thousand ; would you not think 
that at the end of five years the earth would be entirely 
covered with Tobacco and Poppies? A carp lays three 
hundred and fifty thousand eggs at once. But life and 
death are nothing but transformations. Death is the 
aliment of life. These aphides are the game that nour¬ 
ishes other insects, which, in turn, form the food of the 
birds we eat. Then we are returned to the elements, 
and serve as manure to the grass and the flowers, which 
will produce and feed other aphides. 
Alphonse Karr. 
FLORAL MIMICRY. 
A NOTABLE instance of the resemblance of plants to 
animals is to be seen in the Cibotium, a genus of 
polypodeaceous Ferns. They are large-growing and very 
handsome, in some cases arborescent, the fronds bipin- 
nate and often glaucous beneath. The fructification is 
remarkably pretty. C. Barometz, sometimes called C. 
glancescens , is believed to be the Barometz, Agnus 
Scythicus, or Tartarian Lamb, about which travelers 
have told so wondrous a tale. This “ Lamb ” consists 
merely of the decumbent shaggy caudex of a kind of Fern, 
which is no doubt the species referred to. When inverted, 
the basal part of the stipes of four of the fronds suitably 
placed, having been retained as legs, and the rest cast 
away, these caudices present an appearance which may 
be taken as a rude representation of some small woolly 
animal. The “traveler’s tale ” is, that on an elevated un¬ 
cultivated salt-plain of vast extent, west of the Volga, 
grows a wonderful plant, with the appearance of a lamb 
{Baran, in Russian), having feet, head and tail distinctly 
formed, and its skin covered with soft down. The 
“ lamb ” grows upon a stalk about three feet high, the 
part by which it is sustained being a kind of navel; it 
turns about and bends to the herbage, which serves as its 
food, and pines away when the grass dries up and fails. 
The fact on which this tale is based appears to be, that the 
caudex of this plant may be made to present a rude ap¬ 
pearance of an animal covered with silky hair like scales, 
and, if cut into, is found to have a soft inside, with a red¬ 
dish, flesh-colored appearance. When the herbage of its 
native haunts fails through drought, its leaves, no doubt, 
droop and die, but both perish from the same cause, and 
independently of each other. " Thus it is,” observes Dr. 
Lindley, “ that simple people have been persuaded that 
there existed, in the deserts of Scythia, creatures half ani¬ 
mal, half plant.” This condition of the root-stalk of some 
Ferns long engaged the attention of early writers of the 
marvelous, and many strange figures were published of it; 
but Dr. Beyne, of Dantzic, in 1725, declared that the pre¬ 
tended Agnus Scythicus was nothing more than the root 
of a large Fern covered with its natural villus, or yellow 
down, and accompanied by some of the stems, &c., in 
order, when placed in an inverted position, the better to 
represent the appearance of the legs and horns of a 
quadruped. 
The Radulia eximia, a genus of plants closely allied to 
Gnaphalium, is the “ Vegetable Sheep ” of New Zealand, 
a plant that causes great inconvenience to the shepherds, 
as, at a distance, the clumps so nearly resemble sheep that 
they are not unfrequently taken for them, when calling 
them in from the mountains. 
We are indebted to the Garden for our illustration of 
“A bunch of quaint flowers,” and for the following very 
interesting article in relation to it: 
“To make a list of the plants which in some way re¬ 
semble others not in the least related to them would be a 
long task, but a few of these resemblances may be in¬ 
stanced here. Thus the resemblance between Fabiana im- 
bricata , a Solanaceous plant, and some of the Ericas is so 
close as to deceive any one at the first glance; so also a 
bush of Colletia Benthamiana might readily pass for a 
clump of the Irish Furze or Gorse. Or, again, why the 
Salisburia, a Conifer, should produce leaves like the pin¬ 
nules of a gigantic Maiden-hair Fern is another puzzle. 
Even a good botanist might be excused if he thought that 
