INTRODUCTION. 



This is the fourth and last of my manuals or treatises on 

 certain groups of the insects of Eastern North America. 4 

 These works were conceived of necessity and brought forth 

 with great labor. However, they have or will perhaps justify 

 their existence in two ways, first by giving needed employment 

 for the brain of a human who by virtue of inherited tendencies 

 has too strong a predilection for work ; second, by furnishing 

 beginners in one volume a means of identifying and classifying 

 their specimens taken afield. 



Forty and more years ago I began the collecting of 

 beetles, bugs, grasshoppers and their near kin, in the fields 

 and woods of Indiana. For a quarter of a century the work 

 was continued in that State whenever opportunity offered and 

 at all seasons of the year. In 1911 I began to pass my win- 

 ters in southern Florida, there to collect, between the months 

 of October and May, insects of the same orders. At the very 

 beginning of my collecting, the classification and naming of 

 my specimens became a serious problem. Their original de- 

 scriptions were scattered through hundreds of pamphlets, pe- 

 riodicals and books, many of which had been out of print for 

 scores of years. Entomological libraries were, and are still, 

 very scarce in the middle west, and specialists in the respective 

 orders were few and too busy to give much attention to the 

 needs of a beginner. Therefore of necessity I began also the 

 collecting of entomological literature, and to prepare for my 

 own use tables or keys of certain groups. The needs of the 

 tyro, based on my own experience, were ever before me, and 

 led to the belief that my tables and accession notes would be 

 of some value, hence the preparation of my "Orthoptera of 

 Indiana" in 1903, and "Coleoptera of Indiana" in 1910. Hav- 

 ing broadened my collecting field to include Florida, I also 

 broadened the area covered by my last three works to include 

 the United States east of the Mississippi River and Canada 

 east of the 90th Meridian. Many of the species of Heteroptera 

 herein treated have a much wider range, but I have included 



4 The other three are "The Coleoptera of Indiana," issued in 1910 ; "Rhyncho- 

 phora or Weevils of Northeastern America," prepared by Chas. W. Leng and myself 

 and issued in 1916, and the "Orthoptera of Northeastern America," issued in 1920. 



M*3\ 



