APIARY. 
with a detergent mixture of half a pound of 
simple oxymel, six ounces of burnt alum, and two 
drachms of sulphate of copper. Aphthee, especially 
in unusually cold and wet weather in spring or 
winter, is sometimes an epizootic in both sheep 
and black cattle; so that, whenever it appears, 
precautions ought to be adopted to prevent it 
from spreading. The disease is rarely so severe 
in black cattle as in sheep, sometimes healing of 
its own accord, seldom exciting sufficient fever 
to impair the appetite, and never exciting so 
much as to indicate any danger. It may con- 
tinue during ten or fourteen days or even during 
a longer period ; but it gradually disappears under 
the action of a few mild doses of physic.—Cleeve’s 
Prize Essay on the Diseases of Sheep in Journal of 
Eng. Agr. Society.—Spooner on Sheep— Youatt on 
Cattle. 
APIARY. ‘A group of garden bee-hives, or a 
_ place in which bees are kept. See Buns. 
APION. A large genus of insects of the cole- 
| opterous order. It comprises many of the small- 
| est individuals of the weevil tribe ; and possesses 
a sad interest to the farmer in its devastations 
upon the seeds of clover. About ninety species 
of it have been enumerated by naturalists; but 
many of these can be distinguished from one 
| another only by the aid of a microscope; and 
| furrows and catenulated lines. 
_ only two or three are conspicuous enough in mis- 
| chief to challenge any special notice. The largest 
| insects of the genus do not exceed two lines and 
_ ahalf in length, and some measure scarcely one 
line. Their crust is usually very hard, and not 
unfrequently adorned with somewhat vivid me- 
tallic tints, and sculptured with deep parallel 
They take their 
name from a Greek word which signifies a pear, 
and present a considerable miniature resem- 
blance to that fruit in shape; their antennze are 
scarcely or not at all bent, and are inserted some- 
times towards the middle, and sometimes near 
the base of the rostrum; the latter projects for- 
ward, and is slender, elongate, nearly cylindrical, 
and somewhat curved ; their thorax is narrow and 
conical or somewhat cylindrical ; and their abdo- 
men is widest at the hinder extremity, and usu- 
ally very much dilated. In their states of at once 
larva, pupa, and perfect insect, they feed on 
plants ; and in the case of several of their species, 
they are permanently and exclusively attached 
to particular plants in the same appropriating 
manner as the species of aphides. Most feed upon 
leguminous plants, and certain species feed chiefly 
or exclusively upon the cultivated clovers, the 
restharrow, the meadow vetchling, and the tufted 
vetch. Some species feed also, in an exclusive 
manner, upon other plants than those of the 
great leguminous group, and particularly upon 
the common mallow and other plants of the 
malvaceous tribe. 
Apion apricans—also called Apion flavifemora- 
tum—tfeeds upon red clover, Trifolium pratense, 
and is considerably the most mischievous species 
APION. 
215 
of apion. It usually abounds on stones and warm 
banks by the sides of fields, and seems to occur 
in all parts of Great Britain. Its length is about 
one line and a half; its body is black; its head 
is finely punctured ; its rostrum is long, shining, 
filiform, finely punctured, and somewhat thick- 
ened in the middle; its antenne are prevailingly 
black, but yellowish at the base; its thorax is 
thickly punctured, and has a faint line on the 
back; its elytra are broadly ovate, somewhat 
glossy, and marked with parallel lines of punc- 
tures; its legs are black; and its thighs, the two 
anterior coxe, the tibie, and all the trochanters 
are yellowish-red. Its larva is an extremely mi- 
nute whitish worm, with a black head; the pupa 
is small, oval, and white; the skin of the pupa 
is so transparent that the limbs of the enclosed 
insect, at an advanced stage of the pupa condi- 
tion, can be distinctly seen; and the perfect in- 
sect, on emerging from the pupa, is soft and 
white, but soon acquires its permanent colours 
and other distinguishing properties. The perfect 
insect passes the winter in a torpid condition be- 
neath the bark of trees, among moss, under stones, 
and in other similar situations; and at the time 
when red clover is ready to flower, the female 
deposits her eggs on the calyx of the florets, 
usually placing them near the base. The larva, 
as soon as it is hatched, begins to eat its way 
through the base of the floret, and consumes the 
rudiment of the seed; and, when increased in 
size and strength, it proceeds through a series of 
seed-vessels, and subsists entirely on their con- 
tents. The injury inflicted sometimes amounts 
to the total destruction of considerably more than 
one half of all the clover seed of a crop, and the 
serious deterioration of much of the remainder 
by partially gnawing or by deprivation of its 
juices. The immediate loss of the destroyed seed 
falls, of course, only upon seed growers; but the | 
eventual loss to the farmer may be very serious, | 
partly by the enhancement of the price of seed, and 
chiefly by the deterioration of the portion which 
he purchases. The destruction of the eggs or 
the young larvee by saturation of the clover heads | 
with some pungent liquid would probably be too | 
difficult and expensive ; and, instead of it, the 
destruction of the parent insect in spring, might 
be attempted by sweeping all suspected places in 
and around fields with small nets sufficiently close 
in the meshes to catch and retain the insects. 
Apion flavipes is also a very common and mis- 
chievous species, and attaches itself to white 
clover, Zrifoliwm repens, in the same manner in 
which Apion apricans preys upon red clover. Its 
length is about one line and a quarter; its body 
and its rostrum are black and shining; its ros- 
trum is not very long, and slightly thickened at 
the base and the apex; its antenne are yellowish 
at the base, and inserted behind its middle; its 
thorax is scarcely wider than its head, thickly 
punctured, and marked behind the middle with 
a short, impressed, dorsal line; its elytra are 
