208 Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 



south cotton and beans are also attacked by lace-bugs. The most familiar 

 eastern species is the hawthorn lace-bug, Corythuca arcuata, which is com- 

 mon on the leaves of hawthorn-bushes. The bugs keep almost exclusively 

 on the under side of the leaves. The eggs are laid in small groups on the 

 leaves, each egg being imbedded in a little bluntly conical mass of a brown 

 sticky substance which hardens soon after egg-laying and looks much like 



a small fungus. The top of the glistening 

 white egg can be seen, however, by looking 

 down on one of these brown masses. The 

 young is broadly oval and flattened in shape, 

 brown and spiny, and moults five times in its 

 development. The torn, delicate, whitish 

 exuviae (cast skins) stick to the leaf. The 

 adults hibernate under the fallen leaves 

 on the ground beneath the bushes. In 

 California a similar lace-bug, Corythuca sp., 

 (Fig. 287), infests the Christmas berry, 

 Heteromeles arbutijolia, a plant whose clusters 

 of bright red berries take the place in Cali- 

 fornian Christmas-tide decorations of the 

 holly of the East. The eggs (Fig. 287) are 

 deposited in the same way as the hawthorn 

 lace-bugs', and the life-history is practically 

 the same. But because the California winter 

 is much less severe and the Christmas berry 

 is covered with green leaves all the year, active lace-bugs, young as well 

 as adult, can always be found on the bushes. Lace-bugs, small as they 

 are, injure any plant on which they gather in numbers, by the continual 

 draining away of the sap. Spraying the infested bushes or trees with 

 kerosene emulsion (p. 189) will kill the insects. 



The flattest of all the bugs, flatter than the bedbugs even, are the 

 curious members of the small family Aradidae. They live in the cracks or 

 beneath the bark of decaying trees, and their dull brown color and flat leaf- 

 like body make them very difficult to distinguish when at rest in their hiding- 

 places. The glistening white eggs are laid under the bark. The flatbugs 

 are often mistaken for bedbugs, as they are nocturnal and are often found 

 in log cabins. But they probably feed exclusively on plant-sap, being 

 especially attracted to mills and recently felled trees, where they suck up the 

 sap exuding from the cut or sawed logs. Aradus cinnamomeus (Fig. 288) 

 is about the same size as a full-grown bedbug and is reddish in tinge, so that 

 superficially it does much resemble a bedbug. But most adult flatbugs 

 have wings, while all the bedbugs are wingless. 



FIG. 287. The lace-bug, Cory- 

 thuca sp., of the California 

 Christmas berry, Heteromeles 

 arbutijolia; at bottom, eggs on 

 small tubercles on leaf; above, 

 just-hatched young, intermediate 

 stage, and adult. (Eight times 

 natural size.) 



