Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 205 



behind, tapering forward to the narrow prothorax and head. It is about 

 J inch long. The air-bush bug, Phymata wolfii, a rough, horny-bodied, 

 yellowish-green insect with brown or blackish band across the abdomen, 



is about i inch long or less and the body is 

 rather like some scaly seed. The abdomen is 

 curiously widened behind into two thin, angular, 

 scale-like e.xpansions. It conceals itself in 

 flower-cups and captures the nectar-sucking 

 insect visitors. It is very strong and overcomes 



Fig. 283. 



Fig. 2 



Fig. 283. — A thread-legged bug, Emesa longipes. (Natural size.) 



Fig. 284. — A damsel-bug, Nobis jusca. (After Bruncr; natural size indicated by line.) 



insects, as small butterflies, bees, and wasps, much larger than itself. 



Another small family of blood-sucking bugs is the AcanthiidK, of which 

 the most familiar is the wingless degenerate pest, the bedbug, Acanthia 

 lectularia (Fig. 285), world-wide in distribution and detestation. To the 

 fortunate few who have not at one time or other been forced to a personal 

 acquaintance with this bug species it may be told that it is, when full-grown 

 and fairly nourished, about \ inch long, reddish brown in color, and broad 

 and flat bodied. Small wing-scales or jiads can be seen on close examina- 

 tion of specimens. The bugs, both immature and adult, can run quickly 

 and, because of their flatness, can conceal themselves in narrow cracks. In 

 such crevices in bedsteads, in walls and floors, they hide by day, coming 

 out at night to feed. In spring the females lay about two hundred oval 

 white eggs in lots of fifty at a time in their haunts in crevices. The eggs 



