Historical Sketch of the Biology of Aquatic and 
Semiaquatic Hemiptera. 
The entomologist of to-day, who fails to review the works 
of the early writers, misses much that would add to his appre- 
ciation of the age and dignity of his science. The seventeenth 
century workers were acquainted with some of the wonderful 
transformations of insects. In the field of aquatic Hemiptera 
there were notes prior to 1600, but Aldrovandi, in his “‘Histor- 
ium Natura de animalibus,” 1618, gives us our first available 
notes on water bugs. No doubt observations had been made 
by scientific workers before him, for in Mouffet’s “Insectorum 
theatrum,” 1634, are figures of Notonecta, Nepa and Ranatra. 
When we recall that Mouffet’s information probably came to 
him in the form of manuscripts handed down through the 
varying fortunes of time from the great Swiss naturalist, 
Conrad Gesner, who worked in the first half of the sixteenth 
century (born 1516, died 1578), we are justified in believing 
that some knowledge of the water bugs was early achieved. 
In 1726 Marie Sybille Merian, a lady who was more artist 
than scientist, brought forth a “Dissertation sur la generation 
et les transformations des insectes de Surinam.” In this she 
figures the rapaceous habit of a Belostomatid in feeding upon 
a frog! 
Frisch (1727-28) brought out the first of a series of ex- 
tended works that included those of Reaumur, Roesel, De Geer, 
- Goeffrey, etc. He figured under most cumbersome names some 
of the water bugs. Since his plates are the first creditable 
ones to appear, those pertaining to water bugs are reproduced 
on plate IV. 
It is unfortunate that Swammerdam’s “Biblia nature” 
(1737-38) should bear a date later than Frisch, because the 
work was done some years before his death, which took place 
in 1680. It is in Swammerdam that we find an argument 
against spontaneous generation. He was speaking of water 
bugs. “These water scorpions live in the water all the day, 
out of which they rise about the dusk of the evening into the 
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