“Another moth of this group, sometimes called the winter moth, has fore wings of a grayish wine-color dotted with brown and striped crosswise in a darker shade. The female is a little better favored than that of the one we have just been considering, having wings of a sort, but too rudimentary to admit of flying. It may be seen running over the ground toward the end of autumn, when cold weather is approaching. Its tardy appearance has earned it the name of winter moth. Like the moth of the inchworm it climbs trees to lay its eggs, but can be prevented by the use of tar on the trunk. Its eggs hatch in the spring, and the caterpillars are full-grown by May. They are generally blackish, with white, yellow, or green stripes running lengthwise. On leaving the egg these caterpillars bore the buds of pear, apple, apricot, and other fruit trees. Later they install themselves, one by one, between two leaves, the edges of which they unite with threads of silk.” CHAPTER LIII SAP-SUCKERS “What do plant-lice eat?” asked Jules one day. “I have never seen them feeding on leaves.” “They do not feed on them,” his uncle replied; “they drink the sap through a very fine, short, pointed sucker which they carry against the breast when not in use. The insect plunges it into the plant and for whole days without moving drinks the sap at the point pricked. When this place is sucked dry it passes to another, but without much change of position. The plant-louse is a sedentary creature; to move around a stem no bigger than your little finger is for the louse a long journey fraught with perils not lightly to be faced, a few steps forward to make room in the rear for some fifty children as fast as they are brought into the world being about all that the boldest of these creatures dares to undertake. But plant-lice of the last generation of the year have wings and lay eggs which in the spring renew the race annihilated by the cold of winter. These winged lice are no timid stay-at-homes like the others: they gladly quit the natal leaf to see a bit of the world. It is their business to travel hither and yon and lay their eggs in many places so that in the following spring all plants shall have their share of lice, and it is to fulfill this duty that they are expressly provided with wings. Clouds of these traveling plant-lice, dense enough to obscure the light of day, have been observed. “Many other insects have, like the plant-louse, a straight, pointed sucker which they plunge into the substance they wish to drain of its juice, and which they hold against the breast when not in use. The cicada furnishes us a very good example, as do also the large bugs found on trees and on many plants. The cabbage feeds two of them: the harlequin cabbage-bug, which is red with numerous black spots, and still another cabbage-bug of a bluish-green color with white or red spots.