FIELD BOOK OF PONDS AND STREAMS 



The eggs are inserted into the decayed tissues of plants, 

 but their little crowns of shell filaments are left waving from 

 the surface and at hatching this end of the egg opens like the 

 cap in Benacus eggs. 



Length of adult, about one half inch. 



Fig. 179 — Water scorpion, Ranatra fusca, show- 

 ing the caudal tube which it thrusts up to the surface 

 for air. 



Water scorpion, Ranatra fusca. — Ranatra (Fig. 179) looks 

 like a brown, water-logged stick which has taken to walking 

 and when it is lying still it is hardly distinguishable from the 

 twigs all about it. These water scorpions hang head down- 

 ward on the rushes and sedges with their air tubes thrust up 

 to the surface. They are common, too, among any dead 

 leaves and shore trash. When they are lifted out of the water 

 they sometimes squeak faintly, making this noise by rubbing 

 a roughened patch on the outside of each front leg against 

 the edge of the prothorax. Water scorpions are rapacious^ 

 wantonly clutching and sucking the life blood of pond-dwelling 

 mayflies and tender j^oung damselflies. 



According to Enock, the eggs of Ranatra are laid on half 



236 



