290 



NATURAL HISTORY OF ARTHROPODS. 



the tarsi and apical end of the tibias are more or less black, there is a black point at 

 the costal apex of the corium, and the venter is marked with four dark brown lines. 

 The membrane is exceedingly long, and has four longitudinal veins, and the sides of 

 the abdomen, particularly of the female, are a little curved. It is about one-third of 

 an inch in length, by about the one-twenty-fifth of an inch across the thorax. The 

 costa of the corium is protracted like a narrow rim far beyond the middle of the 

 membrane. It is a rather sluggish insect, which may be found in the undergrowth of 

 oak woods throughout all the warm parts of the year ; and it is distributed over most 

 of the sheltered localities of the United States from Maine to Georgia, and west to 

 Texas and Arizona. In the colder sections of the country, in Canada, and on the 

 mountains of New Hampshire, North Carolina, and the northwest, it is replaced by 

 JV. muticus, a species which lacks the spines of the thorax and scutellum, and which 

 has the front of the head bent down, in the form of a little horn. 



Next to these the members of the sub-family Leptocorisina form a connecting link 

 with the Alydina, and through them with the rest of the Coreoidea. Here the 

 body and members are also long, but not so slender as in the preceding group. 

 The head has two protracted lobes with a gutter between them, or these are split 

 apart. The antenna? are composed of four long joints, the basal one being very 

 much longer than the head ; and the membrane is long, with numerous parallel veins, 

 those near the base being forked, while the outer margin is bounded by a narrow 

 prolongation of the corium. A conspicuous feature of most, if not of all the genera 

 is seen in the greatly prolonged basal joint of the tarsi. J^eptocorisa tipiiloides is a 

 conspicuous and common member of this group, occurring in the southern States and 

 extending through Mexico and Central America into Guiana and Brazil. When fresh 



^j d? 



it is of a pale greenish-yellow color, having a dark triangular spot at the base of the 

 membrane, and the antennas pale reddish, with the last joint piceous but whitish at 

 base. Protenor belfragei is a rather more clumsy form of a pale clay-yellow color, 

 with the head lobes well separated, and which inhabits most of the United States east 

 of the Rocky Mountains. 



The Alydina are of moderately narrow form, with a sub-conical head contracted 

 behind the eyes, the last joint of the antennae thicker than the intermediate ones, and 

 the hind pair of femora enlarged towards the tip and armed beneath with unequal 

 spines. In these the corium is also protracted along the margin of the membrane, but 

 not so far as in the preceding group, and the membrane has numerous long veins, some 



of which form areoles at base, and fork at tip. Sev- 

 eral genera, such as Alydus, Tollius, and Megaloto- 

 mtis, inhabit the United States, and the species are 

 numerous in most parts of America. Our native 

 Stachyocnemis forms an exception here in having 

 the end of the corium oblique and not narrowly pro- 

 duced. 



Our fauna is rich in the next group, Anisoscelidina, 

 some of which are very pretty and moderately large 

 insects, but tropical America claims the richest and 

 most elegantly colored of them all, and the species are 



FIG. 3U.-Acanthocephala arcuata. ^^ ^^ numerous _ The j) iact(yr MUneatUS of our 



plate is steel blue with yellow thoracic stripes. The Acanthocephalina embrace some 

 of our largest forms, such as Acanthocephala dedivis from the extreme southern States, 



