Other small insects nourish themselves on the enormous swarms of plant-lice in a less gentle way, but a way which man is very glad to see in active operation, namely, by biting them and sucking out their soft entrails—thus destroying them in great numbers. The lady-bird beetle is especially active in this matter, both when it is a grub and on attaining its adult form. A trustworthy observer saw as many as forty aphides consumed by a lady-bird in an hour. Where the plant-lice or aphides abound, there come also in countless swarms the beetles known as lady-birds. In the year 1869, such a cloud of these beetles passed over and settled on the fields and gardens of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, as to cause something like terror; it was impossible to walk in the lanes without crushing hundreds under foot. But the little lady-birds are not like the terrible locust, which appears in millions and devours all vegetation before it; on the contrary, they are what are called “beneficials,” and come solely to feed on and destroy the plant-lice of the hops, plum trees, and apple trees. A first-rate hop crop in the year 1870 was the consequence of the abundance of lady-birds in 1869. It is this beneficent activity of the lady-birds which has given them their name. In Italy they are called _Bestioline del Signore_, also _Madonnine_, and _Marioline_, and in France _Bête à Dieu_. In English they are “our lady’s blessed bugs,” which save the crops from destruction. The exertions of the aphides in pricking the plants they infest so as to get at their juices lead to the growth of galls on the leaves, and also on the rootlets of many plants, and often the leaves become rolled up into bag-like bodies filled with aphides. Many trees and smaller plants are killed by these attacks, but it is probable that where the plants have not been rendered delicate by nursing and cultivation, and where the aphides are not a strange foreign kind, introduced by man’s carelessness or by some rarely (if ever) occurring wind or flood, the aphides do not actually destroy any plants by their visitation, excepting the weaklings, and that their numbers are kept within bounds by their natural enemies the lady-birds and other such carnivorous insects.