204 Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 



into houses primarily to drink human blood. It is about an inch long, 

 pitchy brown or black, with long narrow head, and with bright red patches 

 on the sides of the body and on the base and apex of the fore wings. These 

 insects, whose normal outdoors food consists of various insects, often noxious 

 ones, as locusts and potato-beetles, are specially common in the South, where 

 Comstock says they not infrequently sting children. The banded soldier- 

 bug, MUyas cinctus, is a common 

 wide-spread friend of the farmer, 

 preying on many kinds of noxious 

 insects. It is yellow in all stages of 

 development with conspicuous fine 

 transverse black bands on legs and 

 antennae. It roams about over plants 

 from early summer to late autumn, 

 FIG. 282-The blood-sucking cone-nose benevolently ass imilatin g the blood 

 Conownus sangmsugus. (After Howard * 



and Marlatt; natural size.) of its various insect cousins. It glues 



its eggs to the bark of trees and covers them with a protecting water-proof gum. 

 Another fairly well-known member of this family is the wheel-bug, Prionidus 

 cristatus, especially common in the South. The full-grown bug is about 

 an inch long, black, and has on its thorax a thin convex crest with nine teeth. 

 This is the "wheel." The little jug-shaped eggs are laid in six-sided single- 

 layered masses of about seventy, which are glued to the bark of trees, or on 

 fence-rails, the sides of houses, etc. The young are blood-red, with black 

 on the thorax. The wheel-bugs are specially beneficial because they are 

 among the few predaceous insects that prey on the well-protected hairy 

 caterpillars that infest our shade and orchard trees. 



Closely related to the Reduviids are the curious and readily recognized 

 thread-legged bugs, Emesidae. The few known species have the body very 

 slender and long, and the legs and antennas simply like jointed threads. 

 The fore legs, however, are spined and fitted for seizing prey. The common 

 species, Emesa longipes (Fig. 283), has the body a little less than i inches 

 long, each middle and hind leg a little more than i^ inches long, and the 

 wings when folded not reaching the tip of the abdomen. It is clayey brown 

 in color with a reddish tinge above. Howard says that one of the thread- 

 legged bugs frequents spiders' webs and robs the spiders of their prey. The 

 damsel-bugs (Nabidae) are another small family of predaceous insects which 

 usually lurk among flowers and foliage where they capture small insects, 

 but which in autumn may often be seen running about on sidewalks and 

 elsewhere about houses, probably looking for winter hiding-places. One 

 of the commonest and most conspicuous damsel-bugs is the shining jet-black, 

 yellow-legged species Coriscus subcoleoptratus. The wings and wing-covers 

 (in most individuals) are reduced to mere scales, the body is wide and plump 



