174 UPLAND AND MEADOW. 



tinue until their appetite prompts them to seek for food, 

 which it does pretty constantly. They grasp any avail- 

 able insect that comes within reach, and suck the fluids 

 from its body. But they are not content with an insec- 

 tivorous diet. Time and again, like some aquatic beetles, 

 they seize a small fish, always at the gills, and soon draw 

 from it most, if not all, the blood the body contains. 

 Considering how readily they can pierce the thick skin 

 of a person's finger, it is not strange that a minnow an 

 inch or two long quickly succumbs when once a water- 

 boatman has made good his hold. 



There are other insects, of about the same size and 

 general outline as the Notonectse, for which I know of 

 no common name. In the minds of many they are con- 

 founded with the preceding, from which they difPer in 

 habits as well as anatomy. So far as my personal expe- 

 rience extends, they do not bite, and I have never seen 

 them attack small fishes. 



While resting from my labors for a moment, after 

 picking out a few water-boatmen for future study, I saw 

 a single specimen of a long, attenuated, gray insect, with 

 legs as exaggerated as are those of a " walking-stick" or 

 Diapheromera. What to call them I do not know. My 

 entomological friends say Ranatra, and we had better 

 follow their example. They are apparently as lazy as 

 water-boatmen are restless. When they do see fit to 

 move, it is with great deliberation, as when they walk 

 circumspectly along the edge of the still waters where 

 sunfish eggs are likely to be. These they seize and suck, 

 and so quietly that the guarding sunfish does not recog- 

 nize the depredator from a chance twig that has floated 



