OF HARTING. 425 



observer it would appear to be running on the water 

 with as much ease and certainty as if it were on a 

 solid surface, but on close inspection it will be found 

 that the underside of the body is in actual contact 

 with the water, and that in fact it is propelled along 

 the surface like a boat. Another of our water bugs, 

 nearly allied to Gerris, but much less active (Hydro- 

 metra Stagnorum\ really does walk on the water. It 

 is a much smaller insect than Gerris, with a body 

 almost as slender as its legs, and may often be seen 

 creeping among the plants growing at the edge of 

 stagnant pools. 



Among the Field bugs which we have occasionally 

 swept off the herbage, the flowers of wild plants, and 

 the foliage in hedgerows and copses, we may notice 

 Reduvius personatus, a very predacious black fly, 

 which in its perfect state is very fleet footed. During 

 its earlier stages it is always found under a voluntarily 

 assumed disguise of a very strange character, its body 

 and limbs being completely covered with a thick 

 coating of loose particles of dust. Under this mask, 

 which it carefully renews after each successive moult, 

 its movements are very slow and awkward, and, 

 according to French entomologists, it is not too 

 fastidious to feast on the Bed bug in preference to 

 other insects of a less exceptional flavour. From this 

 we may infer that the Cimex lectularius may cer- 

 tainly be found at Harting, but strange to say, we 

 cannot from personal observation assert that it is so, 

 we have never met with this entomological celebrity 

 within fifty miles of the apartment in which we are 

 penning this sentence. Notwithstanding this, we feel 

 that it would be no very extravagant flight of imagi- 

 nation to assume that the experience of others in 

 connection with the bed bug has been of a less 

 negative character in the parish, and that where the 

 masked bug is found, there also will its special prey 

 be met with. The bed bug then we think may be 



