CHAPTER X 
THE TRUE BUGS, CICADAS, APHIDS, SCALE- 
INSECTS, ETC. (Order Hemiptera), AND THE 
THRIPS (Order Thysanoptera) 
W HEN an' Englishman says “bug” — and 
he doesn’t say it in polite society—he 
means that particular sort of bug which 
we more specifically speak of as bedbug; 
when we say “bug” we are likely to mean any insect 
of any order; but when a professed student of insects, 
an entomologist, says or writes bug, he means some 
member of the insect order Hemiptera. It is to this 
order of “bugs” that we have now come in our system¬ 
atic consideration of insects, and it is in this order that 
we first meet conspicuously the difficulties of treating 
systematically the populous insect class. From now 
on the making of this book useful depends on the discriminating selection 
of the few kinds of insects whose special consideration the limits of 
text and illustration permit, leaving the great majority of species to be 
referred to comprehensively and vaguely as the “others.” 
The Hemiptera, or true bugs, make up a large order compared with any 
of those so far considered, although a smaller one than certain others yet to be 
taken up. As regards popular acquaintanceship and interest also this 
order is still more inferior to the other large ones, namely, the beetles, the 
moths and butterflies, the two-winged flies, and the ants, bees, and wasps. 
Most of the true bugs are small, and obscurely, or at least inconspicuously, 
colored, and few of them attract that attention necessary to gain popular 
interest. 
The order Hemiptera includes over 5000 known species of North 
American insects, representing a large variety and a great economic impor¬ 
tance; some of the most destructive crop pests and most discomforting insect- 
scourges of man and the domestic animals belong to this order. The 
chinch-bug’s ravages in the corn- and wheat-fields of the Mississippi Valley 
offer effective evidence to the dismayed farmers of the workings of a dis¬ 
pleased Providence; the tiny sap-sucking aphids and phylloxera and insig- 
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