Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 
205 
behind, tapering forward to the narrow prothorax and head. It is about 
J inch long. The air-bush bug, Phymata wolfii, a rough, horny-bodied, 
yellowish-green insect with brown or blackish band across the abdomen, 
is about § inch long or less and the body is 
rather like some scaly seed. The abdomen is 
curiously widened behind into two thin, angular, 
scale-like expansions. It conceals itself in 
flower-cups and captures the nectar-sucking 
insect visitors. It is very strong and overcomes 
Fig. 284. 
Fig. 283.—A thread-legged bug, Emesa longipes. (Natural size.) 
Fig. 284.—A damsel-bug, Nabis fusca. (After Bruner; natural size indicated by line.) 
insects, as small butterflies, bees, and wasps, much larger than itself. 
Another small family of blood-sucking bugs is the Acanthiidae, of which 
the most familiar is the wingless degenerate pest, the bedbug, Acanthia 
lectularia (Fig. 285), world-wide in distribution and detestation. To the 
fortunate few who have not at one time or other been forced to a personal 
acquaintance with this bug species it may be told that it is, when full-grown 
and fairly nourished, about } inch long, reddish brown in color, and broad 
and flat bodied. Small wing-scales or pads can be seen on close examina¬ 
tion of specimens. The bugs, both immature and adult, can run quickly 
and, because of their flatness, can conceal themselves in narrow cracks. In 
such crevices in bedsteads, in walls and floors, they hide by day, coming 
out at night to feed. In spring the females lay about two hundred oval 
white eggs in lots of fifty at a time in their haunts in crevices. The eggs 
