282 NATURAL HISTORY OF ARTHROPODS. 



lays its eggs on the twigs and bark of the common pine trees. These hatch during 

 the early summer, and the young may then be seen roaming over the trees in search 

 of plant-lice and young caterpillars, which they pierce and suck to death, often hold- 

 ing them out on the tip of the rostrum, while keeping them from getting away by 

 pressing down with the fore-feet. The adult insect may be found in the trees as 

 early as March, and numbers may be beaten therefrom during the summer and 

 autumn. This species inhabits most of the thinly-distributed pine belts, from Lower 

 Canada to southern Florida, and varies very much in the width of the red markings 

 of the thorax, wing-covers, .and abdomen. 



A still better known, but rather smaller, species, Milyas cinctus, represents in the 

 United States the comprehensive sub-family Reduviina. Numerous 

 varieties of forms are included in this very large group, some of 

 which are almost as broad as those belonging to the foregoing, 

 but others are quite narrow, and a few are almost linear in outline. 

 The species above-mentioned lives sometimes in the same places as 

 our Apiomerus. It is likewise quite common, and may be taken 

 singly or in pairs upon a great variety of bushes and trees, from 

 early summer until late hi the autumn. The eggs are often ghied 

 to the bark of pine trees, covered by a waterproof gum, which 

 ^^°' tlLliijf' ^"^ effectually excludes the rain, dries and hardens, and does not in- 

 commode the young larvae when they push up the lid-like ends 

 to make their way out. 



Its color is a wax, or orange yellow in all stages of its existence, and it is made 

 quite conspicuous by the black bands which cross its legs and antennae. The giant 

 of this group is the singular wheel.bug, or Prionotus cristatus, of the latitude south 

 of New York city. It is of a mouse-gray color, closely invested with short hair, and 

 has the knobs of the head, cog-wheel crest on the prothorax, eyes and angles black, 

 with the legs and antennse tinged with chestnut-reddish. The female often measures 

 more than an inch and a quarter in length, while the male is much smaller. Both 

 sexes are formidable blood-sucking insects, able to conquer their neighbors of what- 

 ever order, and not at all backward in punishing man for sitting next their favorite 

 trees. Like the foregoing, they glue their eggs to the bark of linden and other 

 trees in our southern parks and gardens, extruding at the same time a gummy cement 

 which keeps the eggs in condition throughout all the bad weather of winter, untU the 

 return of warm weather in spring. 



A connecting-link between these groups and the Cimicidae is seen in the next 

 family, Nabid^. Here the body is oblong, somewhat oval behind, with a thick head, 

 long and curving down in front, and terminating in a long, slender rostrum. The fore- 

 thighs are thick, spindle-shaped, and the tibi83 attached to these are closely armed on 

 the inside with minute spines. The wing-covers are either longer than the abdomen, 

 or very much abbreviated ; and the membrane has a large central areole, which is 

 more or less penetrated by branching veins, and around which short veins branch off 

 in all directions. Several forms of more than one genus of this group inhabit North 

 America ; and the common Coriscus ferus, a pale yellowish insect, inscribed with 

 fuscous upon the head, thorax, and body, and with dusky veins on the membrane, is 

 distributed rather widely on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It secretes itself in 

 the blossoms of golden-rod, or among the foliage of other low plants, and lives by 

 capturing small insects. Nabicula siibcoleoptrata is an anomaly in this group. It 



