is so transparent
that you can see through it by transmitted light: a dainty glass globe,
you would say, of emerald green, set upon six tapering, jointed, hairy
legs, and provided in front with two large black eyes of many facets,
and a pair of long and very flexible antennae, easily moved in any
direction, but usually bent backward when the creature is at rest so as
to reach nearly to his tail as he stands at ease upon his native
rose-leaf. There are, however, two other features about him which
specially attract attention, as being very characteristic of the aphides
and their allies among all other insects. In the first place, his mouth
is provided with a very long snout or proboscis, classically described
as a rostrum, with which he pierces the outer skin of the rose-shoot
where he lives, and sucks up incessantly its sweet juices. This organ is
common to the aphis with all the other bugs and plant-lice. In the
second place, he has half-way down his back (or a little more) a pair of
very peculiar hollow organs, the honey tubes, from which exudes that
singular secretion, the honey-dew. These tubes are not found in quite
all species of aphides, but they are very common among the class, and
they form by far the most conspicuous and interesting organs in all
those aphides which do possess them.

The life-history of the rose-aphis, small and familiar as is the insect
itself, forms one of the most marvellous and extraordinary chapters in
all the fairy tales of modern science. Nobody need wonder why the blight
attacks his roses so persistently when once he has learnt the unusual
provision for exceptional fertility in the reproduction of these insect
plagues. The whole story is too long to give at full length, but here is
a brief recapitulation of a year's generations of common aphides.

In the spring, the eggs of last year's crop, which have been laid by the
mothers in nooks and crannies out of reach of the frost, are quickened
into life by the first return of warm weather, and hatch out their brood
of insects. All this brood consists of imperfect females, without a
single male among them; and they all fasten at once upon the young buds
of their native bush, where they pass a sluggish and uneventful
existence in sucking up the juice from the veins on the one hand, and
secreting honey-dew upon the other. Four times they moult their skins,
these moults being in some respects analogous to the metamorphosis of
the caterpillar in