HARVEST-FLIES. 
203 
and other noxious insects may fairly be attributed to the 
exterminating war which 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 
encouraging 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, will devour great 
numbers of destructive insects ; and our farmers should be 
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. (Hemiptera 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 (Cicadad.e) ; having short 
antennae, 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 (ArinnimE) ; having antennae 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 very soft, generally fur- 
nished with two little tubercles at the end ; no piercer in the 
females. 
