APIS, in Mythology, a divinity worshipped by the ancient Egyptians at Memphis. It was an ox, having certain exterior marks; in which animal the soul of the great Osiris was supposed to subsist. This animal had the preference to all others, as being the symbol of agriculture, the improvement of which that prince had so much at heart.
According to several learned writers on the Egyptian religion, Apis was only a symbolical deity. "Amongst the animals consecrated to ancient rites (says Ammianus Marcellinus), Mnevis and Apis are the most celebrated: the first is an emblem of the sun, the second
These insects are found in great numbers not only on the stems and leaves, but even upon roots of many trees and plants. Those trees that are most loaded with the insects, as already observed, suffer greatly from them. The plant lice thrust their sharp pointed rostrum into the substance of the leaf to draw out their sustenance, which warps the stems and leaves, and occasions in the latter cavities underneath, and swellings above; nay, even in some, a kind of hollow gall filled with insects, as is often seen on elm leaves.
It appears astonishing that the slight puncture of so small an animal should so greatly disfigure a plant; but it must be remembered, that plant lice always live in numerous associations, which increase visibly by the prodigious fruitfulness of those insects; so that although each puncture be slight, yet the number of them is so great, so reiterated, that it is no longer a wonder the leaves should be disfigured. Lovers of gardening and plants are extremely anxious to free and cleanse their trees from this vermine; but their care often proves unavailing, the insect is so fruitful that it soon produces a fresh colony. The best and surest method of extirpating it is to put on the trees infested with them some larvae of the plant-louse lion, or aphidivorous flies; for those voracious larvae destroy every day a great number of the insects, and that with so much the more facility, as the latter remain quiet and motionless in the neighbourhood of those dangerous enemies, who range over heaps of plant lice, which they gradually waste and diminish.