INJURIOUS TO CUCUMBER, SQUASH AND MELON 117 



sive odor, hence the name stink-bug by which it is known in 

 many locaUties. The insect ranges from Canada to Central 

 America. Its favorite food plants are squash and pumpkin, 

 but melons and cucumbers are sometimes severely injured. 

 As a rule the squash bug is more destructive in the small garden 

 than in the fields of the commercial grower. The reason is 

 that in the case of large tilled fields the quantity of hibernating 

 shelter is relatively smaller, and as the insects are distributed 

 over a larger area the injury is not so great to any particular 

 plant. In the home garden the 

 squash bug is a most troublesome 

 and vexatious pest. 



The adult bugs hibernate in 

 rubbish, in board-piles or under 

 any convenient shelter. They 

 emerge from winter quarters 

 rather late in the spring and are 

 often found about gardens resting 

 under pieces of boards or other 

 shelter, apparently waiting for the 

 squashes to come up. The adult 

 bug (Fig. 72) is about | inch in 

 length and of a dirty brownish 

 black color above and brown 



mottled with black below. The old bugs attack the plants 

 as soon as they are well out of the ground and often kill them 

 outright. In feeding, the insect punctures the plant with 

 the bristles of its beak and sucks out the sap. At the same 

 time it apparently injects into the wound some injurious 

 poison. When the plants are small, a few punctures are 

 enough to cause serious injury. After mating, the female 

 deposits her eggs in clusters of three or four to fifty or more 

 usually on the under surface of the leaves. The arrangement 

 of the eggs varies greatly ; usually they are placed in more or 



Fig. 72. — The squash bug, 

 adult (X 2§). 



