APHID • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Aphid

... females lay their relatively large, smooth, hard-coated black eggs on the twigs; these resistant eggs carry the species safely over the winter. At springtide, when the leaves begin to sprout from the opening buds the aphid eggs are hatched, and the young insects after a series of moults, through which hardly any change of form is apparent, all grow into wingless 'stem-mothers' much larger than the egg-laying females of the autumn. The stem-mothers have the power, unusual among animals as a whole, but not very ...

— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter