HEMIPTERA. 113 



food are injurious, these bugs are to be reckoned among 

 the beneficial hemipters. Many of them eat stems and 

 leaves of aquatic plants. 



Five of the sixteen terrestrial heteropterous families 

 are predaceous, hence beneficial to man. Among them 

 may be mentioned the assassin bug, the soldier bug, 

 the damsel bug, the thread-legged bug, and the flower 

 bug ; two species of the last-named feed 

 upon the chinch bug. All the remain- 

 ing eleven families of the order feed 

 upon plant juices, hence these are the 

 reprobate bugs which give a bad name 

 to the whole order, in the minds of 

 many people. Here among these eleven 

 families are to be found the squash bug, 

 the chinch bug, the leaf bugs, the stink -r 



bugs, the shield-backed bugs, and the FlG . 48 ._ S hort- winged 

 negro bugs these latter are very small chinch bug, Blissus leu- 

 and very black bugs to be found on copterus. (Howard, after 

 raspberry bushes and other fruits, 

 which they spoil for market by imparting a very disa- 

 greeable odor to them. 



The chinch bug, that notorious pest of the farmers of 

 the land, is one of these harmful hemipters. This insect 

 and the hessian fly do, perhaps, more damage to growing 

 crops than any other half dozen insects known. (Fig. 48.) 

 Like all other hemipters, it has an effective sucking beak, 

 and its larval period is largely spent just beneath the 

 surface of the ground, where it feeds upon the roots of the 

 plant whose leaves are to feed it later. 



The first mention of the chinch bug dates from North 

 Carolina in 1785. To-day it is distributed over southern 

 Africa, and from Europe to the sandy plains of Hungary. 



