390 THE SCUTATA, OR SHIELD-BUGS. 



the gentleman in the bag-wig for the man who could 

 find a pleasure in such trifles. The bag- wigs have 

 long ago vanished from Fleet Street, but it is not 

 very long since I saw one of these insects crawling 

 on the pavement in that great thoroughfare, perhaps 

 on the very spot where Berkenhout caught his spe- 

 cimen a hundred years ago. It usually measures 

 about two-thirds of an inch in length, and has the 

 lateral angles of the prothorax produced into flat 

 spines; its colour above is greyish-brown, covered 

 with small black points, and with the extremity of 

 the triangular scutellum of a bright reddish-orange 

 colour; the projecting margins of the abdomen are 

 spotted with yellow and black, and the lower surface 

 of the body, the legs, rostrum, and antennse, are red. 

 Unlike most of the species of its tribe, it is said to be 

 carnivorous in its habits, preying upon caterpillars, 

 the juices of which it sucks. 



Few of the Bugs of this tribe can be said to be in- 

 jurious to man in any way, but two common British 

 species sometimes do considerable damage to the 

 crops of cruciferous plants, by piercing their leaves, 

 in order to suck their juices. These are the Strachia 

 ornata and the S. oleracea, small bugs about the size 

 of the Sehirus bicolor, but of a rather more elongated 

 form, and destitute of the spines with which the tibiae 

 of that insect are beset. The former species is of a 

 bright red colour, prettily spotted with black ; whilst 

 the second is of a brassy blackish-green, spotted with 

 red or yellowish- white. 



Upon hedge-plants, one of the principal abodes of 

 the Field Bugs, and especially in the neighbourhood of 



