WEALTH OF INSECT LIFE 



183 



FIG. 148. A thrips. 

 Greatly enlarged. 



heads of grain, timothy, clover, and in 

 flowers, especially such as the daisy. 

 The majority of this order are plant- 

 feeders; a few are predaceous. These 

 insects, commonly called thrips, are 

 scarcely visible to the naked eye. They 

 are about one-twelfth of an inch long. 

 When the head of a daisy has been 

 rubbed in the hand, a lens will be needed 

 to clearly observe the insects, and even 

 then the observer may require a com- 

 pound microscope before the fringed wings can be clearly 

 perceived. HEMIPTERA. 



It is customary among people in general to speak of 

 all insects, or forms resembling them, as bugs. The 

 term can properly be applied only to the members of 

 this order. These have incomplete metamorphosis, 

 haustellate mouth-parts, four wings. The Hemiptera 

 or true bugs include some of our most injurious forms. 

 The term is derived from ?;/, hemi, half, and Trrepov, 

 pteron, wing. The order contains a number of forms 

 widely diverging from the general type, so that the 

 group is best understood when resolved into two fairly 

 well-defined suborders, the Heteroptera and the 

 Homoptera. The Heteroptera are those with front 

 wings of an unequal texture, the basal half being the 

 heavier, the outer half not infrequently translucent. It 

 is also characteristic of this suborder that the beak rises 

 from the front part of the head. The Homoptera com- 

 prise those with wings of like texture throughout, and 

 beak rising from the ventral portion of the head. 



