Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 
213 
meteorological conditions. The “chinch-bug cholera” is well established 
all through the Mississippi Valley, but it can be artificially spread by dis¬ 
tributing dead and infected bugs in fields where it has not begun to develop. 
This method is followed in several of the corn- and wheat-growing states 
whose entomolgists keep on hand a supply of this fungus—it can be artifi¬ 
cially cultivated on various nutrient media in the laboratory—to send out 
to farmers on request. The work was begun by Professor F. H. Snow of 
the University of Kansas, and though in the beginning its beneficial results 
were overrated, there is no doubt that much good has come from this wide¬ 
spread attempt to disseminate artificially the “chinch-bug disease.” 
The family Coreidae, to which the squash-bug, the box-elder bug, and 
certain other more or less familiar insects belong, is another of the larger true 
bug families, being represented in this country by about two hundred species. 
In this family the membrane (apical half) of the fore wings is furnished 
with many veins, most of which arise from a cross-vein near the base (Fig. 
268), and the antennae arise from the upper side of the head. The squash- 
bug, Anasa tristis (Fig. 294), ill-favored and ill-smelling, is a pest of squasjies 
and pumpkins all over the country. 
It is brownish black above, with some 
yellow spots along the edges of the 
body, and dirty yellow below. It hiber¬ 
nates in the adult stage, comes out in 
early spring, and lays its eggs on the 
young sprouts or leaves of squash- and 
pumpkin-vines. The young hatch in 
about two weeks and at first are green, 
but soon turn brown and grayish. 
They suck the sap from the growing 
vine, and soon stunt them or even kill 
them. The remedy is to protect the 
young plants by means of frames cov¬ 
ered with netting. After the plants get 
them so easily. The box-elder bug, Leptocoris trivittatus (Fig. 295), a con¬ 
spicuous black insect with three bright-red broad lines on the prothorax 
and the fore wings, with edges and veins of a more dingy red, has become 
familiar with the increased planting of box-elder trees in gardens and streets. 
In the Mississippi Valley and in the plains states these box-elders are much 
used for shade and ornamental trees because of their hardiness, and with this 
increased supply of trees the box-elder bugs have come to be very abundant. 
In late autumn they gather under sidewalks or, often, in stables and houses 
to pass the winter, and have led many housewives to think a new and 
enlarged kind of bedbug had come to town. The bug lives on the sap of 
Fig. 294. Fig. 295. 
Fig. 294.—A squash-bug, Anasa tristis. 
(Natural size.) 
Fig. 295.—The box-elder bug, Leptocoris 
trivittatus. (Twice natural size.) 
well started the bugs cannot injure 
