. A tour round my garden . Natural history. 30 A TOUR. BOUND MT GABDEIt. in the course of a day; that is to say, a volume ten or twelve times equal to its own body. A single aphis which, at the beginning of the warm weather, would bring into the world ninety aphides, which ninety, twelve days after, would each produce ninety more, would be, in the fifth generation, author of five biUions, nine hundred tod four millions, nine thousand aphides—which is a tolerable amount. Now, one aphis is, in a year, the source of twenty generations. I very- much doubt whether there would be room for them upon
. A tour round my garden . Natural history. 30 A TOUR. BOUND MT GABDEIt. in the course of a day; that is to say, a volume ten or twelve times equal to its own body. A single aphis which, at the beginning of the warm weather, would bring into the world ninety aphides, which ninety, twelve days after, would each produce ninety more, would be, in the fifth generation, author of five biUions, nine hundred tod four millions, nine thousand aphides—which is a tolerable amount. Now, one aphis is, in a year, the source of twenty generations. I very- much doubt whether there would be room for them upon all the trees and all the plants in the world. The whole earth would be given up to aphides; but this fecundity, of which there are so many examples in nature, need not alarm us. One poppy plant produces thirty-two thousand seeds, one tobacco plant, three hundred and sixty thousand; each of these seeds producing in its turn thirty-two thousand, or three hundred thousand—would you not think that, at the end of five years the earth would be entirely covered with tobacco and poppies ? A carp lays three hundred and fifty. thousand eggs at once. But life and death are nothing but transformations. Death is the aliment of life. These aphides are the game that nourishes other insects, which in turn form the food of the birds we eat. Then we are returned to the elements, and serve as manure to the grass and the flowers, which will produce feed other aphides. We need not go far to seek for the enemies of the Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Karr, Alphonse, 1808-1890; Wood, J. G. (John George), 1827-1889. London : F. Warne ; New York : Scribner, Welford and Armstrong
Size: 1991px × 1256px
Photo credit: © The Book Worm / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectnaturalhistory, booky
