HARVEST-FLIES. 
203 
and other noxious insects may fairly be attributed to the 
exterminating war wbicb has wantonly been waged upon 
our insect-eating birds, and we may expect the evil to in¬ 
crease unless these little friends of the farmer are protected, 
or left undisturbed to multiply, and follow their natural 
habits. Meanwhile, some advantage may be derived from 
encouramno; the breed of our domestic fowls. A flock of 
young chickens or turkeys, if suffered to go at large in a 
garden, while the mother is confined within their sight and 
hearing, under a suitable crate or cage, Avill devour great 
numbers of destructive insects ; and our farmers should he 
urged to pay more attention than heretofore to the rearing 
of chickens, young turkeys, and ducks, with a view to the 
benefits to be derived from their destruction of insects. 
II. HARVEST-FLIES, &c. (Ilemiptera Homoptera.) 
By many entomologists this division is raised to the rank 
of a separate order, under the name of Homoptera ; but 
the insects arranged in it are, as already stated, much more 
like the true Hemiptera, or bugs, than they are to the in¬ 
sects in any other order, which shows the propriety of keeping 
these two divisions together, and that separately they hold 
only a subordinate importance compared with other orders. 
The insects belonging to this division are divided by nat¬ 
uralists into three large groups, or tribes. 
1. Harvest-flies, or Cicadians (Cicadada:) ; having short 
antenna3, which are awl-shaped or tipped with a little bris¬ 
tle ; wings and wing-covers, in both sexes, inclined at the 
sides of the body ; three joints to their feet; firm and hard 
skins ; and in which the females have a piercer, lodged in 
a furrow beneath the extremity of the body. 
2. Plant-lice (Aphidid^) ; having antennas longer than 
the head, and threadlike or tapering from the root to the 
end ; wing-covers and wings frequently wanting in the 
females ; feet two-jointed ; the body veiy soft, generally fur¬ 
nished with two little tubercles at the end ; no piercer in the 
females. 
