Historical Sketch of the Biology of Aquatic and 

 Semiaquatic Hemiptera. 



The entomologist of to-day, who fails to review the works 

 of the early writers, misses much that would add to his appre- 

 ciation of the age and dignity of his science. The seventeenth 

 century workers were acquainted with some of the wonderful 

 transformations of insects. In the field of aquatic Hemiptera 

 there were notes prior to 1600, but Aldrovandi, in his ''Histor- 

 ium Natura de animalibus," 1618, gives us our first available 

 notes on water bugs. No doubt observations had been made 

 by scientific workers before him, for in Mouffet's ''Insectorum 

 theatrum," 1634, are figures of Notonecta, Nepa and Ranatra. 

 When we recall that Mouffet's information probably came to 

 him in the form of manuscripts handed down through the 

 varying fortunes of time from the great Swiss naturalist, 

 Conrad Gesner, who worked in the first half of the sixteenth 

 century (born 1516, died 1578), we are justified in believing 

 that some knowledge of the water bugs was early achieved. 



In 1726 Marie Sybille Merian, a lady who was more artist 

 than scientist, brought forth a "Dissertation sur la generation 

 et les transformations des insectes de Surinam." In this she 

 figures the rapaceous habit of a Belostomatid in feeding upon 

 a frog! 



Frisch (1727-28) brought out the first of a series of ex- 

 tended works that included those of Reaumur, Roesel, De Geer, 

 Goeffrey, etc. He figured under most cumbersome names some 

 of the water bugs. Since his plates are the first creditable 

 ones to appear, those pertaining to water bugs are reproduced 

 on plate IV. ♦ 



It is unfortunate that Swammerdam's "Biblia naturae" 

 (1737-38) should bear a date later than Frisch, because the 

 work was done some years before his death, which took place 

 in 1680. It is in Swammerdam that we find an argument 

 against spontaneous generation. He was speaking of water 

 bugs, "These water scorpions live in the water all the day, 

 out of which they rise about the dusk of the evening into the 



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