10. Honey-Dew - Page 2

acquired the curious necessity for getting rid of this sweet,
sticky, and nutritious secretion nobody knows with certainty; but it is
at least quite clear that the liquid is a considerable nuisance to them
in their very sedentary and monotonous existence--a waste product of
which they are anxious to disembarrass themselves as easily as
possible--and that while they themselves stand to the ants in the
relation of purveyors of food supply, the ants in return stand to them
in the relation of scavengers, or contractors for the removal of useless
accumulations.

Everybody knows the aphides well by sight, in one of their forms at
least, the familiar rose aphis; but probably few people ever look at
them closely and critically enough to observe how very beautiful and
wonderful is the organisation of their tiny limbs in all its exquisite
detail. If you pick off one good-sized wingless insect, however, from a
blighted rose-leaf, and put him on a glass slide under a low power of
the microscope, you will most likely be quite surprised to find what a
lovely little creature it is that you have been poisoning wholesale all
your life long with diluted tobacco-juice. His body 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 antennæ, 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