214 Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 



the trees until winter, and it does not care for much food while hibernating. 

 As its mouth is a sucking-beak, it cannot possibly injure hard and dry house- 

 hold substances, as some housewives claim. Another Coreid, not uncom- 

 mon, is the cherry-bug, Metapodius femoratus, which punctures cherries to 

 suck the juice from them. It is dark brown with a rough upper surface, 

 and its hind femora are curved thick and knobby, while the hind tibiae have a 

 blade-like expansion. The leaf-footed plant-bug, Leptoglossus oppositus, 

 is a Coreid destructive to melon-vines, recognizable by the remarkable 

 leaf-like expansion of its hind tibiae. A similar leaf-footed species, Lepto- 

 glossus phyllopus, occurs in the south, where it attacks oranges and other 

 subtropical fruits. 



Allied to the Coreidae is the family Berytidae, or stilt-bugs, of which but a 

 few species are known in this country. One of these, Jalysus spinosus, 

 is common all over the country east of the Sierra Nevadas. It is about 

 inch long, very slender, and light yellowish brown in color, and is found 

 "in the undergrowth of oak woods." Its life-history is not known. 



The remaining four families of true bugs are distinguished by their 

 possession of 5-segmented (instead of 4-segmented) antennae (with a few 

 exceptions) and by having the body broad, short, and flatly convex, shield- 

 shaped it may then fairly be called, or very convex or turtle-shaped. Almost 

 all of these bugs are exceptionally ill-smelling and have on this account 

 got for themselves the inelegant but expressive popular name of stink-bugs. 

 As a matter of fact the giving off of offensive odors is characteristic of most 

 of the terrestrial true bugs, the squash-bug, chinch-bug, and others being just 

 about as malodorous as the so-called stink-bugs. 



Of these four families of shield-bodied bugs, one, the Pentatomidae, is 

 represented in this country by numerous species, but the other three con- 

 tain but one or two genera each. While most of the Pentatomids, or stink- 

 bugs, are plant-feeders, a few are blood-sucking, while some feed indifferently 

 on either animal or plant juices. Several of the more common Pentatomids 

 are green, as the large green tree-bug, Nezara pennsylvanica, nearly inch 

 long, flattened, with grass-green body margined with a light yellow line, 

 occurring in the fall on grape-vines and other plants; and the bound tree- 

 bug, Lioderma ligata, much like Nezara, but with broader body edging of 

 pale red and with a pale-red spot on the middle of its back, found 

 often abundantly on berries and hazel. Other common stink-bugs are 

 brown, as the various species of Euchistes. Still others are conspicuously 

 colored with red and black, as the abundant small species Cosmopepla car- 

 nifex, about ^ inch long, shining black with red and orange spots, most con- 

 spicuous of which are a transverse and a longitudinal line in the back of 

 the prothorax. The best known and most destructive of these bizarre- 

 colored stink-bugs is the harlequin cabbage-bug, or calico-back, Murgantia 



