THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 1? 



A FEROCIOUS WATER-BUG. 



BY G. W. HARVEY, ADIN, CALIFORNIA. 



In the warmer streams and pools of California, lives a creature whose 

 character is very aptly portraye'd by the above title. He is not only 

 ferocious, but a cannibal as well. 



Among the boys and girls who go wading in the streams this fierce 

 bug is known by the name of " toe pincher," because he frequently 

 mistakes their bare toes for lawful quarr}', and thrusts savagely into them 

 \\'.:h his scimitar like proboscis. They tell me that his bite is very painful, 

 though not at all dangerous. 



Scientifically he bears the title of Pedinocoris macronyx, Mayr: He 

 is of a uniform dull brown colour, with a barely perceptible mottling on 

 the wing-sheaths or elytra. The females are possibly a shade darker 

 than the males. He has prominent, you might say protruding, black 

 beady eyes, and his head terminates in a long curved proboscis, seven 

 mm. in length, which gives him a very odd and fiendish appearance. His 

 legs are perceptibly hairy, and armed with sharp, curved claws, very long 

 and prominent on the two front legs, which are strong and so placed that 

 they work in a vertical plane, jointed at an acute angle, and might easily 

 be mistaken for jaws or mandibles. The claws on these front legs are 

 jointed so that they can be bent down upon the first joint of the leg, 

 virtually clamping the prey in a vice, as it were. It is with these that he 

 seizes his prey, and holds them in a herculean grip until devoured. He is 

 three and a half centimetres long, with a reach of one and a half cm. 

 more in his two front legs, and is two cm. broad across the widest part of 

 the back. 



His range extends from northern California — possibly further north — 

 to Central America, and very likely on into South America. 



He is gifted with a voracious appetite, and his aggressive prowess as 

 a hunter is something appalling to the owner of an aquarium who chances 

 to secure him as a specimen, without having made his previous 

 acquaintance. I well remember my first experience. 



I had a beautiful collection of aquatic insects, fish and tadpoles from 

 the streams about Watsonville, California, and it was on one of my 

 collecting rambles that I discovered Mr. Pediiiocoris. He was a wonder 

 to me, and I took him home, highly elated over the prospect of a new 

 creature to study. 



J.-inuary, 1907 



