THE GIANT WATER-BUGS. 1045 



that State. Its recorded range extends from Pennsylvania and 

 New Jersey west to Wisconsin and Kansas, and southwest to 

 Florida and Louisiana. Smaller with sides more parallel than 

 our other two species, the pale and dark markings more con- 

 trasting above and middle and hind legs distinctly annulated. 



III. Belostoma Latreille, 1807, 144. 



Medium sized broadly oval, flat species having the interocular 

 area much wider than the diameter of one eye ; tylus produced 

 beyond the apex of cheeks ; beak passing front coxse; pronotum 

 subtrapezoidal, its front and side margins more or less sinuate 

 or concave, the latter less convergent than in the two preceding 

 genera, front lobe with a small oval concavity each side ; elytra 

 covering the abdomen, each with a small spot of golden pubes- 

 cence near the inner apical angle of the corium ; membrane with 

 diagonal, usually simple, veins ; connexivum narrowly exposed ; 

 front legs short and stout, their femora grooved ; middle and 

 hind ones longer, more slender, with both femora and tibiae 

 grooved and setose or spinose along the margins of the grooves, 

 the tibiae also fimbriate as in Benacus; apex of middle lobe of 

 sixth ventral in males rounded or subacuminate. 



Bueno (1906a) has given an account of the habits of B. 

 fluminea Say, which may be taken as typical for the genus. In 

 it he says : 



"This species is, in common with all water-bugs, a predaceous carni- 

 vore, feeding on the juices of insects and snails, and very probably of such 

 small or weak vertebrates as it can overpower. In times of stress it will 

 feed on its own nymphs, which in turn are not averse to preying on each 

 other when hungry, which is always. The bug apparently injects some 

 paralyzing poison into its victims. Ordinarily, the prey is seized by the 

 raptorial anterior feet and at times all three pairs are employed to hold 

 fast some powerful insect or large victim, such as a snail. This water- 

 bug's favorite haunts are muddy-bottomed ponds where it lurks among 

 the weeds at the bottom. Sometimes it is found in little bayed-in places 

 in streams, where there is a backwater, with grasses growing into it from 

 the banks, or from the bottom. 



"The eggs of Belostoma are borne during incubation on the back of 

 the male. It was an American woman, Miss F. W. Slater, who finally 

 established 1 " 2 the fact that the female seized the male forcibly and con- 

 verted him into an animated portable incubator. The female places 

 herself on top of the male, her thorax extending outwai'd and her legs 

 hooked under him. Now, starting somewhere near the middle and sidling 

 along every little while, she works her way around him as she fastens 



in2 Amer. Naturalist. 1899. pp. 931 — 933. 



