Io8 FIELD AND FOREST. 



much as it removes leaves and loose plants from the force of the 

 wind and fixes them. 2. It accelerates the transformation of this 

 of this material. 3. It distributes it through the ground. 4. It opens 

 up the undersoil for the plant roots. 5. It makes this fertile. — Nature. 



The "Wheel- Bug," {Reduvius Novendrius.) 



This insect, which, twenty years ago, was rarely noticed in Lan- 

 caster County, is now becoming more numerous; but still, in its adult 

 state, it occurs solitary, except during the nuptial season, when they 

 occur in pairs. Its eggs, which occur in clusters of from forty to fifty, 

 glued together and adhering by their bases to the smooth bark of trees 

 or other objects, their upper or outer ends being crowned by a red, or 

 deep pink fringed disk, something like miniature "sea anemonies" 

 occur in vastly greater nnmbers than either the young or the adult 

 insects. Two years ago we imprisoned a female in a small paper box, 

 set it away and forgot it, in the following month of April happening 

 to open the box, of course, we found our Reduvius dead, but before 

 she died she had deposited about thirty eggs on the side of the box ; 

 and as the room was warm, these had anticipated their normal period,, 

 and therefore the young were already excluded from the eggs — little 

 dusky centres from which diverged disproportionately large blackish 

 legs and antennae knowing that the adults were carnivorous we were 

 in a quandrayupon what to feed such delicate little animals, especially 

 as the weather was yet cold, and out door insects had not yet appeared, 

 at least none that they could have appropriated. We therefore fully 

 made up our minds that they would all have to perish. Judge our sur- 

 prise, when, opening the box a week afterwards, we found about halt 

 of them still alive and increased in size. The other half were lying 

 dead on the bottom of the box. From that time forward we observed 

 them almost daily until their number had been reduced to four or five, 

 which we set at liberty, and these had already developed so far as to 

 exhibit the form and outlines of the adult insect. On two occasions, 

 during our observations, we detected one of the larger and stronger 

 individuals grasping one of the weaker ones, plunging his proboscis 

 into its body and sucking out its contents; and, therefore, we con- 



