214 Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 



the trees until winter, and it does not care for much food while hibernating. 

 As its mouth is a sucking-beak, it cannot possibly injure hard and dry house- 

 hold substances, as some housewives claim. Another Coreid, not uncom- 

 mon, is the cherry-bug, Metapodius jemoratus, which punctures cherries to 

 suck the juice from them. It is dark brown with a rough upper surface, 

 and its hind femora are curved thick and knobby, while the hind tibiae have a 

 blade-like expansion. The leaf-footed plant-bug, Leptoglossus oppositus, 

 is a Coreid destructive to melon-vines, recognizable by the remarkable 

 leaf-like expansion of its hind tibiae. A similar leaf-footed species, Lepto- 

 glossus phyllopuSy occurs in the south, where it attacks oranges and other 

 subtropical fruits. 



Allied to the Coreidae is the family Berytidae, or stilt-bugs, of which but a 

 few species are known in this country. One of these, Jalysus spinosus, 

 is common all over the country east of the Sierra Nevadas. It is about J 

 inch long, very slender, and light yellowish brown in color, and is found 

 "in the undergrowth of oak woods." Its life-history is not known. 



The remaining four families of true bugs are distinguished by their 

 possession of 5-segmented (instead of 4-segmented) antennae (with a few 

 exceptions) and by having the body broad, short, and flatly convex, shield- 

 shaped it may then fairly be called, or very convex or turtle-shaped. Almost 

 all of these bugs are exceptionally ill-smelling and have on this account 

 got for themselves the inelegant but expressive popular name of stink-bugs. 

 As a matter of fact the giving off of offensive odors is characteristic of most 

 of the terrestrial true bugs, the squash-bug, chinch-bug, and others being just 

 about as malodorous as the so-called stink-bugs. 



Of these four families of shield-bodied bugs, one, the Pentatomidae, is 

 represented in this country by numerous species, but the other three con- 

 tain but one or two genera each. While most of the Pentatomids, or stink- 

 bugs, are plant-feeders, a few are blood-sucking, while some feed indifferently 

 on either animal or plant juices. Several of the more common Pentatomids 

 are green, as the large green tree-bug, Nezara pennsylvanica, nearly inch 

 long, flattened, with grass-green body margined with a light yellow line, 

 occurring in the fall on grape-vines and other plants; and the bound tree- 

 bug, Lioderma ligata, much like Nezara, but with broader body edging of 

 pale red and with a pale-red spot on the middle of its back, found 

 often abundantly on berries and hazel. Other common stink-bugs are 

 brown, as the various species of Euchistes. Still others are conspicuously 

 colored with red and black, as the abundant small species Cosmopepla car- 

 nijex, about inch long, shining black with red and orange spots, most con- 

 spicuous of which are a transverse and a longitudinal line in the back of 

 the prothorax. The best known and most destructive of these bizarre- 

 colored stink-bugs is the harlequin cabbage-bug, or calico-back, Murgantia 



