﻿46 SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT 



"It is not surprising, therefore, that persons who have paid no 

 particular attention to the study of insects, often confound together 

 insects which, in the eyes of the professed entomologist, look as dif- 

 ferent from each other as a horse does from a cow or a hog. It would, 

 indeed, be little short of miraculous if this were not so ; for there are 

 about thirty thousand distinct species of insects to be found within 

 the limits of the United States, and of course in such a vast multipli- 

 city, there must be many strong resemblances. 



"■ I will therefore conclude this article on the Chinch Bug, by 

 briefly mentioning several true Bugs, belonging to the same suborder 

 of Half- wing Bugs {Ile(eroptera)^ as that pestilent little foe of the 

 farmer, and which I know to be frequently mistaken for it. The 

 reader will then, by comparing the diff"erent figures, see at once how 

 widely they all differ, and by a very little practice, his eyes will be- 

 come so well educated that he will soon, without any artificial assist- 

 ance from glasses, be able to distinguish the creatures one from the 

 other, as they crawl or fly about in the almost microscopic dimensions 

 assigned to them by their Great Creator. 



" One reason, perhaps, why so many different bugs are popularly 

 confounded with the Chich Bug, is the similarity of their smelL 

 Everybody is aware that chinch bugs possess the same peculiarly 

 unsavory odor as the common Bed Bug; and hence when a person 

 finds a small insect that has this obnoxious smell, he is very apt to 

 jump to the conclusion that it must be a chinch bug. No mode of 

 reasoning, however, can be more unsafe or unsound. There are hun- 

 dreds of difi"erent species of Half-wing Bugs — the common brown 

 Squash Bug {Coreus tristis) for example — that possess this peculiar 

 smell." 



The False Chinch Bug. — This insect is most often mistaken for 

 the genuine article, and letters like the follow- 

 ing, received from a correspondent last Fall^ 

 are not uncommon, and relate to it : 



I came across a (to me) curious thing the other day. 

 I have allowed the purslaue to orrovv in my strawberry 

 "•round this Summer, thiiikinj»- to protect the plants from 

 the sun somewhat. Lately vve have been clearinur it out, 

 and I was much surprised to find under the rank growth 

 millions of chinch bugs. They were not all in the per- 

 False CmNCHBuG-i, pupa; tect state (winged), but many not half grown. Can they 

 c, mature bug. be the real thinjjr? They look like it, and certainly smell 



like it. But the wing-marks do not seem as distinct orbroad, only live white lines cross- 

 ing at an acute angle. Also, the young ones are not red, but ashen gray, and with bodies 

 thicker and broader than the true grain bug. What were they there for ? They would 

 not feed on purslane, would they? and no other weeds were there. I found quantities 

 of leaves and fragments of leaves on the ground ; but the Chinch Bug is not au eater. 



