THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



195 



conjurer promised to come out of the quart 

 bottle and fooled the London cockneys so stu- 

 pendously in the last century. 



According to Dr. Sbimer, this Lacewing Fly 

 was not quite as abundant as the Spotted Lady- 

 bird among the fodder-corn, but still there were 

 so many of them, that be thought that " there 

 was one or more of them for every stalk of that 

 tliickly sown corn." " Every stroke of the cut- 

 ter," he adds, "would raise three or four dozen 

 of tbeni, presenting quite au interesting specta- 

 cle as they staggered along in their awkward, 

 unsteady flight." And he uot only actually ob- 

 served the larvre preying very voraciously on 

 the Chinch Bugs in the tield, but he reared great 

 numbers of them to the mature Fly by feeding 

 them upon Chiunli Bugs. His account of the 

 operations of the larva wlien in captivity is so 

 interesting that we give it here in full: 



I iilacecl one of tlie larvie in a vial, after having cap- 

 tured it in tlie tield in the vcrv act of devouriiiff Chinch 

 Bugs of all sizc«, and stil,-pquenlly intn.diirpil into the 

 vial a immher ..i ( Inn. li Hn.-v. 11, ry had hanlly 

 reached the liutinm, iiriuiv it M-i/.cd .,iir ,,r tlir l.n-.-i 



less for about a iiiiinit.- wliilr il wa^Mirkin- tin- jiu.vs 

 from the lH"h ..i ii~ \irtiin. ami tli.n Ihivw down tlie 

 lifeless -hell. ■ In llii- ua\ , I -aw it desli-ov in iiuick 



Its:' 



! in sii 



roiu the lioily of one bug. 

 remained liiotiouless for 

 ep. Never for a single 

 d it pause in the work. 

 bug, it was on the search 



After this bouiililul 

 an hour or nioie. 

 moment, during' the 

 When not in pn-e- 



for. or in lie ]iiir-uit of others. It manifested much 

 eagenie-- in the |.iii-nit of its prey, yet notwith a lion- 

 like liolliie--; 111 oil several occasions I observed a 

 manihst tiniorousness, a halting in the attack, m if 

 conscious of danger in its hunting expeditions, although 

 here there was none. Sometimes, when two or more 

 bugs were approaching rapidly, it would shrink back 

 Irom the attack, and turning aside go in the pursuit of 

 others. At length, awakening, it would renew the 

 assault as before. On one occasion, when it was on the 

 side of the vial, two inches up, with a large bug in its 

 mouth, I jarred the vial, so that it fell to the bottom 

 and rolled over and over across the bottom; but holding 

 on to its prey, it regained its footing and mounted up 

 to its former position . Occasionally the Chinch Bugs 

 would hasten to escape when pursued, as if in some 

 degree conscious of danger.* 



"We will now give a drawing of the true veri- 

 table Chinch Bug (Fig. 138 a), and by the side 

 of it one of a common species of the Half-winged 

 Bugs, the Insidious Flower Bug {Anthocoris 

 msidiosi(s,Sa.y, Fig. 138 b). This last was re- 

 described and re-named by Dr. Fitch as the 

 False Chinch Bug {Anthocoris pseudo-chinche, 

 Fitcli), a quarter of a century after it had been 

 originally described and named by Thos. Say ; 

 but according to the received rules of scientific 

 etiquette, Say's name must take precedence of 

 Fitch's. t It is so often found in compauy with 



Paper in Proc. Ent. Soc, Phii 



•From Dr. Shii 

 I\' lip 20U--ilO. 



t for a further account of this insect, see a Paper by 

 Senior Editor iu Pruc. Ent. Soc. Phil., VI, p. iH. 



« I 



Colors— (a and b) blaek and white. 



Chinch Bugs, that Dr. Fitch states that it had 

 upon one occasion been sent to him by a cor- 

 respondent by mistake as the veritable Chinch 

 Bug;* and he adds that it may be frequently 

 met with upou the same flowers and leaves with 

 the Chinch Bug, iu Illinois and AVisconsin, from 

 the forepart of July until the close of the sea- 

 sou. We have ourselves repeatedly found it iu 

 compauy with Chinch Bugs under the husks of 

 ears of com in the latter part of the season ; and 

 the fact was stated as long ago as 18U1 in au 

 Essay upon the Noxious Insects of Illinois by 

 the Senior Editor, j Once in the mouth of Sep- 

 tember, when we were examining the corn- 

 husks in a piece of sweet-corn belonging to one 

 of the most extensive growers of market vege- 

 tables near Rock Island, Ills., we showed the 

 Market-gardener himself a coru-husk with sev- 

 eral genuine Chinch Bugs, and also several of 

 these False, or Bogus Chinch Bugs upou it. We 

 had previously asked him if he knew a Chinch 

 Bug when he saw it. " I guess I do," was his 

 reply. "Well, then," we rejoined, "tell us 

 which are the true Chinch Bugs upon this 

 husk." To our great amusement, he poiuted 

 out the False Chinch Bugs as the genuine article. 

 And yet this man, who could not tell a Chinch 

 Bug when he saw it, probably had his pocket 

 annually picked of some hundred dollars on the 

 average of years, by this rapacious little savage ! 

 Now, in the eyes of an entomologist, the two 

 insects look as ditferent one from another 

 as a Cow does from a Horse. And yet the 

 popular eye is, up to the present day, so un- 

 educated iu appreciating even the most glaring 

 difl'erences in shape and structure among these 

 almost infinitesimally small creatures, that be- 

 cause the two are each of them colored black 

 and white, though the Bogus Chinch Bug is 

 only about half the size of the Genuine Chinch 

 Bug, and is also shaped quite ditferently from 

 that insect, the two are very generally con- 

 p. in. 



Society, IV, p. 347. 



