| noyed its relentless enemy.” 
914 
PMPIBUIS 
supply of food. They usually station themselves 
on the youngest shoots and the under side of the 
leaves of plants, apparently because these are at 
once the juiciest, the most nourishing, the most 
accessible, and the most pervious parts of the 
plants; and they, therefore, abstract the cambium 
or elaborated sap of the plants immediately after 
it is prepared, and prevent it from making sucha 
descent through the downward organisms as is 
essential for maintaining vegetable life and the 
performance of the vegetable functions. Entire 
plants are thus robbed of their nourishment ; and 
either the leaves shrivel up, as in the cabbage, 
the plum-tree, and the currant bush; or the blos- 
| soms drop, and the fruit does not set, as in the 
beanand the hop. Theexcrementitious discharges 
of the aphides form another remarkable and very 
prominent feature in their economy ; but as they 
are often theoretically confounded, and seem to 
be sometimes actually blended, with certain vege- 
_ table exudations which share with them in one 
popular name, we reserve a full notice of them 
for the article Honry-Drw: which see. 
Several species of the sylviade or soft-billed 
birds, particularly the yellow wren, the gold-crest, 
the babillard, and a number of others, feed upon 
the aphides, and generally make such havoc upon 
the garden species that they may be emphatically 
regarded as the gardener’s friends. The beauti- 
ful beetles coccinellee, popularly called lady-birds 
and lady-cows, comprising about thirty British 
species, prey, in both their larva and their per- 
fect state, most conspicuously upon the aphides, 
and sometimes destroy entire swarms. “Their 
method of attacking the aphides,” says Mr. Curtis, 
_ “is curious. I have seen one of the latter strug- 
gling whilst this little insect alligator threw his 
fore-legs about it, and was greatly amused at the 
skill it exhibited; for, fearing that the aphis 
might escape, it gradually slid along to the wings, 
which were closed, and immediately began to bite 
them so that in a very short time they were ren- 
dered useless, being matted together ; it then re- 
turned in triumph to the side of its helpless vic- 
tim, and seizing the thorax firmly in its grasp, it 
ate into the side, coolly putting its hind-leg over 
those of the aphis, whose convulsive throbs an- 
The coccinellee are 
often attracted in myriads to feed upon the aphi- 
des of the hop plantations, the gardens, and the 
orchards ; and in some seasons when the aphides 
were unusually multitudinous, they have appear- 
ed in some districts in such enormous numbers 
as to alarm the ignorant and superstitious. The 
larva of a coccinella, of its natural size, is shown 
in fg. 17, Plate XVI.; the same larva, greatly 
magnified, in /%g. 18; the pupa ef a coccinella, 
upon @ leaf, in Mig. 19; the imago of the two- 
spotted coccinella, in /vg. 20 ; and the imago of 
the seven-spotted, in J/g. 21. See article Coc- 
cinnLLaA. The grubs of hemerobide or lace- 
winged flies—easily recognisable by their slow 
flight, their broad, greenish, gauzy wings, their 
APHTH Aa. 
bad odour, and their shining, amber-like eyes— 
are so voracious devourers of aphides as to he 
often called aphis-lions. The larva of one of 
them, Chrysopa perla, much magnified, is shown 
in Fig. 22, and the perfect insect in fg. 23. The 
maggots of some syrphide or wasp-flies, feed on 
the cabbage plant-lice, and possibly on some 
other species of aphides ; and one of these, with 
an aphis in its mouth, is shown in /%g. 24, and the 
perfect insect of it, Syrphus pyrastri, in Fig. 25. 
Some small species of ichneumons deposit their 
eggs in the bodies of the latter or autumnal gen- 
erations of two or three species of aphides ; and all 
the earwigs devour plant-lice, particularly such 
species as cause the leaves of plants to shrivel. All 
the aphides are easily seized by the most slowly 
moving perfect insects and even by their larvee, 
for they make no effort to escape—Paper by Pro- 
fessor Rennie in Y. Journal of Agr.—Paper by Mr. 
Curtis in Journal of Royal Agr. Soc. of England. 
—White’s Natural History —Pictorial Museum of 
Animated Nature—Virey Des Meurs et des In- 
stincts— Journal of a Naturalist quoted in Quar. 
Journal of Agr.—The Entomologist.—Loudon’s | 
Gardener's Magazine—Hunter’s Georgical Essays. 
—Salisbury’s Hints on Orchards.— Treatise on Hus- 
bandry in Lib. of Useful Knowledge. 
APHTH Ai or Turusu. A disease in the mouth 
of sheep and black cattle. It resembles blain or 
gloss-anthrax, and has often been mistaken for 
it, but is less severe. It consists in pustules or 
vesicles along the sides of the tongue, at the root 
of the tongue, athwart the palate, and sometimes 
backward to the fauces and forward to the out- 
side of the lips; it occasionally extends and ag- 
gravates itself into a general ulceration of the | 
mouth; and it is frequently accompanied by in- 
ability to feed, loss of appetite, and general lassi- | 
tude. It often appears at the time when the 
foot is affected with foot-rot, and has been sup- 
posed, not without reason, to have some connexion 
with that disease, for the sheep, being in the 
habit of licking its foot when sore, may suck in | 
some of the acrid discharge of foot-rot, and in 
consequence contract a pustulous condition of | 
the mouth. Alum water, applied as a lotion to 
the mouth, will speedily remove the tenderness 
which prevents the animal from feeding ; and, if 
promptly used as soon as the earliest symptoms of 
the disease appear, will effect a cure before any 
of the worst symptoms can have time to he de- 
veloped. Whena lamb is affected with aphthe, it 
communicates the disease to the ewe’s udder, is 
prevented by the ewe from continuing to suck, 
and gradually pines away. The infected udder 
swells and sometimes suppurates, always making 
the ewe lose flesh, and sometimes occasioning one 
or both teats to slough, and rendering the animal 
useless for a stock ewe. When a flock of young 
and old are partially affected, the diseased ought 
to be promptly and completely separated from 
the sound, and the affected parts of the former 
may with advantage be dressed every morning 
ee ee ears 
