214 Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 
the trees until winter, and it does not care for much food while hibernating. 
As its mouth is a sucking-beak, it cannot possibly injure hard and dry house¬ 
hold substances, as some housewives claim. Another Coreid, not uncom¬ 
mon, is the cherry-bug, Metapodius femoratus, which punctures cherries to 
suck the juice from them. It is dark brown with a rough upper surface, 
and its hind femora are curved thick and knobby, while the hind tibiae have a 
blade-like expansion. The leaf-footed plant-bug, Leptoglossus oppositus , 
is a Coreid destructive to melon-vines, recognizable by the remarkable 
leaf-like expansion of its hind tibiae. A similar leaf-footed species, Lepto¬ 
glossus phyllopus , occurs in the south, where it attacks oranges and other 
subtropical fruits. 
Allied to the Coreidae is the family Berytidae, or stilt-bugs, of which but a 
few species are known in this country. One of these, Zalysus spinosus, 
is common all over the country east of the Sierra Nevadas. It is about J 
inch long, very slender, and light yellowish brown in color, and is found 
“in the undefgrowth of oak woods.” Its life-history is not known. 
The remaining four families of true bugs are distinguished by their 
possession of 5-segmented (instead of 4-segmented) antennas (with a few 
exceptions) and by having the body broad, short, and flatly convex,—shield¬ 
shaped it may then fairly be called,—or very convex or turtle-shaped. Almost 
all of these bugs are exceptionally ill-smelling and have on this account 
got for themselves the inelegant but expressive popular name of stink-bugs. 
As a matter of fact the giving off of offensive odors is characteristic of most 
of the terrestrial true bugs, the squash-bug, chinch-bug, and others being just 
about as malodorous as the so-called stink-bugs. 
Of these four families of shield-bodied bugs, one, the Pentatomidse, is 
represented in this country by numerous species, but the other three con¬ 
tain but one or two genera each. While most of the Pentatomids, or stink- 
bugs, are plant-feeders, a few are blood-sucking, while some feed indifferently 
on either animal or plant juices. Several of the more common Pentatomids 
are green, as the large green tree-bug, Nezara pennsylvanica, nearly J inch 
long, flattened, with grass-green body margined with a light yellow line, 
occurring in the fall on grape-vines and other plants; and the bound tree- 
bug, Lioderma ligata , much like Nezara, but with broader body edging of 
pale red and with a pale-red spot on the middle of its back, found 
often abundantly on berries and hazel. Other common stink-bugs are 
brown, as the various species of Euchistes. Still others are conspicuously 
colored with red and black, as the abundant small species Cosmopepla car- 
nijex, about inch long, shining black with red and orange spots, most con¬ 
spicuous of which are a transverse and a longitudinal line in the back of 
the prothorax. The best known and most destructive of these bizarre- 
colored stink-bugs is the harlequin cabbage-bug, or calico-back, Murgantia 
