156 INSECTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



HEMIPTERA. 



Bugs. — Squash-Bug. Plant-Bugs. — Harvest-Flies. — Tree-Hoppers. — 

 Leaf-Hoppers. Vine-Hopper. Bean-Hopper. — Thrips. — Plant-Lice. 

 American Blight. — Enemies of Plant-Lice. — Bark-Lice. 



The word bug seems originally to have been used for any 

 frightful object, whether real or imaginary, whose appearance was 

 to be feared at night. It was applied in the same sense as bug- 

 bear, and also as a term of contempt for something disagreeable 

 or hateful. In later times it became, with the common people, a 

 genera] name for insects, which, being little known, were viewed 

 with dislike or terror. At present, however, we can say, with 

 L'Estrange, though "we have a horror for uncouth monsters, 

 upon experience all these bugs grow familiar and easy to us." 

 We would except, from this remark, those domestic nocturnal 

 species to which the name is now applied by way of preemi- 

 nence ; the real, by an easy transition in the use of language, 

 having assumed the name of the imaginary objects of terror and 

 disgust by night. 



Entomologists now use the word bug for various kinds of in- 

 sects, all, like the bed-bug, having the mouth provided with a 

 slender beak, which, when not in use, is bent under the body, and 

 lies upon the breast between the legs. This instrument consists 

 of a horny sheath, containing, in a groove along its upper surface, 

 three stiff bristles as sharp as needles. Bugs have no jaws, but 

 live by sucking the juices of animals and plants, which they obtain 

 by piercing them with their beaks. Although the domestic kinds 

 above mentioned are without wing-covers and wings, yet most 

 bugs have both, and, with the former, belong to an order called 

 Hemiptera, literally half-wings, on account of the peculiar con- 

 struction of their wing-covers, the hinder half of which is thin and 

 filmy like the wings, while the forepart is thick and opake. 

 There are, however, other insects provided with the same kind of 

 beak, but having the wing-covers sometimes entirely transparent, 

 and sometimes more or less opake, and these, by most entomolo- 

 gists, are also classed among Hemipterous insects, because they 



