204 Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 
Fig. 282. —The blood-sucking cone-nose, 
Conorhinus sanguisugus. (After Howard 
and Marlatt; natural size.) 
into houses primarily to drink human blood. It is about an inch long, 
pitchy brown or black, with long narrow head, and with bright red patches 
on the sides of the body and on the base and apex of the fore wings. These 
insects, whose normal outdoors food consists of various insects, often noxious 
ones, as locusts and potato-beetles, are specially common in the South, where 
Comstock says they not infrequently sting children. The banded soldier- 
bug, Milyas cinctus, is a common 
wide-spread friend of the farmer, 
preying on many kinds of noxious 
insects. It is yellow in all stages of 
development with conspicuous fine 
transverse black bands on legs and 
antennae. It roams about over plants 
from early summer to late autumn, 
benevolently assimilating the blood 
of its various insect cousins. It glues 
its eggs to the bark of trees and covers them with a protecting water-proof gum. 
Another fairly well-known member of this family is the wheel-bug, Prionidus 
cristatus, especially common in the South. The full-grown bug is about 
an inch long, black, and has on its thorax a thin convex crest with nine teeth. 
This is the “wheel.” The little jug-shaped eggs are laid in six-sided single¬ 
layered masses of about seventy, which are glued to the bark of trees, or on 
fence-rails, the sides of houses, etc. The young are blood-red, with* black 
on the thorax. The wheel-bugs are specially beneficial because they are 
among the few predaceous insects that prey on the well-protected hairy 
caterpillars that infest our shade and orchard trees. 
Closely related to the Reduviids are the curious and readily recognized 
thread-legged bugs, Emesidae. The few known species have the body very 
slender and long, and the legs and antennae simply like jointed threads. 
The fore legs, however, are spined and fitted for seizing prey. The common 
species, Emesa longipes (Fig. 283), has the body a little less than i| inches 
long, each middle and hind leg a little more than 1 \ inches long, and the 
wings when folded not reaching the tip of the abdomen. It is clayey brown 
in color with a reddish tinge above. Howard says that one of the thread¬ 
legged bugs frequents spiders’ webs and robs the spiders of their prey. The 
damsel-bugs (Nabidae) are another small family of predaceous insects which 
usually lurk among flowers and foliage where they capture small insects, 
but which in autumn may often be seen running about on sidewalks and 
elsewhere about houses, probably looking for winter hiding-places. One 
of the commonest and most conspicuous damsel-bugs is the shining jet-black, 
yellow-legged species Coriscus subcoleoptratus. The wings and wing-covers 
(in most individuals) are reduced to mere scales, the body is wide and plump 
