THE TRUE BUGS 



(Suborder Heteroptera.) 



The true bugs belong to this group and the common squash- 

 bug may be taken as a typical example. In all, the metamorphoses 

 are incomplete and the mouth-parts are formed into a beak fitted 

 for sucking either the juices of plants or of insects or the blood of 

 fishes, birds or mammals. The wings, when present, differ 

 radically from those of the preceding order in that the front 

 wings or wing covers, or elytra, or hemielytra, as they are 

 variously termed are horny at the basal half and membranous for 

 the end portion. When they are folded the membranous por- 

 tions overlap, that of the right wing covering that of the left, but 

 there are many exceptions to this rule, and even in the same 

 species, while most specimens will be found with the right wing 

 uppermost, there will be some in which the membrane of the left 

 wing is on top. 



The order is a very large one, but has not been studied with 

 the same assiduity which has characterized the study of other 

 groups. There are not more than half a dozen entomologists or 

 collectors in the United States who specialize in the true bugs. 

 Yet these insects are easily captured and are as readily preserved 

 as beetles and the studying of their varying habits offers a most 

 attractive field. Probably twelve thousand species have been 

 described in the whole world of which only about one thousand six 

 hundred inhabit the United States. This number could be more 

 than quadrupled by careful collecting and, indeed, our most 

 learned authority on the group, Professor P. R. Uhler, of Balti- 

 more, informs me that he infers that we have five thousand species 

 in the United States, of which not more than three thousand 

 species have been brought together in collections, but the number 

 is being added to every month. He thinks that fifty thousand, 

 as an estimate of the existing species in the whole world, would 

 be a very insufficient supposition. 



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