The Giant Water-Bug 295 



will catch fish in your aquarium as already men- 

 tioned in the Fore Talk on pages eight and nine. 



The giant water-bugs are homely, forbidding- 

 looking creatures (Fig. 277), and are the biggest 

 bugs in the bug family. They hide in ponds and 

 will catch any small live thing, fish or frog that 

 comes their way, grasping them with those 

 scorpion-like front claws, jabbing them with their 

 beak and probably paralyzing them with the poison 

 spittle which they pour into the wound. 



A smaller specimen of a water-bug, built on 

 the lines of the giant one, lived all this last winter 

 in my aquarium, and was plastered all over its 

 shoulders and legs with eggs. 



The American observer, Miss Slater, has said 

 that the female bug has a habit of laying her eggs 

 on her husband's back. The old gentleman ob- 

 jects to it most strenuously, but his wife, as the 

 cowboys say, wears the chaps — that is, the leather 

 breeches; in other words, she is master. Miss Slater 

 further says that the gentleman bug, although 

 naturally a livel}^ fellow, feels so disgraced and 

 depressed with his load of eggs that he will not 

 even get out of the way of an enemy, apparently 

 J) re ['erring to die than be disgraced by acting the 

 part of a nurse girl. 



