THE STRUCTURE OF A "SHACK.' 



137 



oil lamp. Water was sprayed over the outside of each 

 tent and allowed to freeze. It cost $3.50 each to save 

 the one hundred and twenty-five trees of the grove. 

 Another season it will cost but little, as the tents and 

 oil stoves will be on hand. Verily, in this part of 

 Florida an orange grove is a costly plaything. 



From the leaves of one of the trees in this grove 

 I took two specimens of that large, dark brown heter- 

 opterous insect, Metapodius fem- 

 oratus Fab. It is one of the 

 largest of our native true bugs, 

 the length being a little more 

 than an inch. Its noteworthv 

 characters are a small projecting 

 spine between the antennae; the 

 enlargement of the hind tibiae, 

 by a dilated and compressed 

 plate, and numerous small ele- 

 vated dots or tubercles on the 

 upper* surface of the thorax. 

 It is said to be a rather frequent insect in the Gulf 

 states. 



On my way home I stopped for a time in a deserted 

 orange grove, near the old Spanish chimneys. Here 

 I examined carefully the structure of a "shack" one 

 of the common temporary shelters erected by the na- 

 tives or occasionally by hunters and tourists. It con- 

 sists of a framework of poles nailed to posts driven 

 into the ground, or to convenient trees, and having 



Fig. 44. 



Metapodius femoratus Fab. 

 (Three-fourths natural iize.) 



