THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



195 



conjurer promised to come out of the qnart 

 bottle and fooled the London cockneys so stu- 

 pendously in the last century. 



According to L)r. Sliimer, 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 he thought that " there 

 was one or more of them for every stalk of that 

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

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

 of them, presenting quite an interesting specta- 

 cle as they staggered along in their awkward, 

 unsteady flight." And lie not only actually ob- 

 served the larv;e preying very voraciously on 

 the Chinch Bugs in the field, but lie reared great 

 numbers of them to the mature Fly by feeding 

 them upon Uliinch Bugs. His account of the 

 operations of the larva when in captivity is so 

 interesting that we give it here in full: 



I placed one of tlie larva; in a vial, after having cap- 

 tured it ill the tiekl in the very act of devouiinij Chiuch 

 Bugs of all sizes, and subsequently introduced into the 

 vial a number of C'liiiich Hugs. They had liardly 

 reached the bottom, In-line it seized one of the largest 

 ones, pierced it with its long jaws, held it almost motion- 

 less for about a minute wliile it was sucking the juices 

 from the body of its victim, and then threw down the 

 lifeless shell. In this way, I saw it destroy in quick 

 stlecession, about a dozen bugs. Towards the last, as 

 its appetite was bcconiiiig satiated, it spent live or more ' 

 minutes in sucking the juices from the body of one bug. 

 After this bountiful niiast, it remained motionless for 

 an hour or nmre, as il asleep. Never for a single 

 moment, during the linst, did it pause in the work. 

 AVhen not in ])iissis>ioii of a bug, it was on the search 

 for, or in tlic pursuit of others. It manifested much 

 eagerness in the pursuit of its prey, yet not with a lion- 

 like boldness; for on several occasions I observeil a 

 manifest timorousness, a halting in the attack, as if 

 conscious of dangerin its hunting expeditions, although 

 here there was none. Sometimes, when two or more 

 bugs were approaching rapidly, it would shiiiik liuck 

 from 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 tell to the bottom 

 and rolled over and over across the bottom; Imt holding 

 on to its prey, it regained its footing antl 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. 1.38 a), and by the side 

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

 Bugs, the Insidiou.s Flower Bug (AntJiocoris 

 insidiosus, S-Ay, Fig. 138 b). This last was re- 

 described and re-namcd by Dr. Fitch as the 

 False Chinch Bug {Anthocoris pseudo-chincJie, 

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

 originally described and named by Thos. Say ; 

 but according to tlic received rules of scientific 

 etiquette. Say's name must take precedence of 

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



[Fig. 13S ] 



I 



•From Dr. Shimer's Paper in Pioc. Ent . Soc, Phil 

 IV pp 201I-210. 



t For a further account of this insect, see a Paper by the 

 Senior Editor in Proc. Ent. Soc. Phil., VI, p. 274. 



« I !> 1 



Colors— (it and b) black and white. 



Chinch Bugs, that Dr. Fitch states that it had 

 upon one occasion been scut 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, in Illinois and Wisconsin, from 

 the forepart of July until the close of the sea- 

 son. We have ourselves repeatedly found it in 

 company with Chinch Bugs under the husks of 

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

 the fact was stated as long ago as 1861 in an 

 Essay upon the Noxious Insects of Illinois by 

 the Senior Editor. f 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 Hock Island, Ills., we showed the 

 Market-gardener himself a coi'ii-husk with sev- 

 eral genuine Chinch Bugs, and also several of 

 these False, or Bogus Chiuch Bugs upon 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 Chiuch Bugs upon this 

 husk." To our great amusement, he pointed 

 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 I 

 Now, in the eyes of an entomologist, the two 

 insects look as different one from another 

 as a Cow does from a Horse. And yet the 

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

 educated in appreciating even the most glaring 

 diflerences 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 diflcrently from 

 that insect, the two are very generally con- 



* New York Reports, I, p. 294. 



t Tram. III. St. Agric. Society, IV, p. 347. 



