The generality of insects, as has been before mentioned, are destined never to behold the birth of their progeny, nor to experience either the pleasures or the cares of parents surrounded by their families. Their anxieties cease when they have carefully stored up their eggs, and their existence is generally soon afterwards at an end. The insect world, therefore, presents us with but few opportunities of witnessing the display of a parental affection on the part of its members; but, as was mentioned in the conclusion of the last chapter, a few examples of the kind do exist, and, perhaps, the very fact of their being few in number contributes to make them the more interesting to us. We have seen a noble instance of self-devotion on the part of a poor spider in defence of her eggs. Let us now turn to some examples of the love of an insect mother for her young larva. If the reader will carefully search the twigs and leaves of the birch-tree in the month of July he may possibly succeed in finding the little insect, the field-bug, of which mention is about being made, and witness for himself the strange spectacle described in the following account from the great work on insects by De Geer. In order that it may be recognised, we have here adjoined a representation of the insect. Its colour is a greenish gray on the back, dotted all over with very minute black spots; the under portion of the insect is greenish yellow, with black spots. It lives upon the sap of the birch-tree. [Illustration: _The Field-bug._] "The mother," says De Geer, "was accompanied by a troop of little ones, sometimes as many as forty in number. She remained constantly with them, generally on a twig or leaf. I noticed that the little ones and their mother did not always remain in the same place, and that as soon as the mother began to move to another position, all the little ones began to run after her, and stopped whenever the mother halted. She used to take them, as it were, for a walk from twig to twig, or from one leaf to another, parading up and down the branches of the tree, and she conducted them wherever she pleased, just as a hen does her chickens. It frequently afforded me great pleasure to observe their movements. One day I cut a young branch of the birch-tree inhabited by such an insect family, and I immediately saw the mother, apparently in great anxiety, begin to flap her wings violently, but without attempting to fly away, as though she would frighten away her enemy. At another time she would have immediately made her escape, thus plainly showing that she remained only in order to defend her young brood."