A BAND OF HUNTERS 
145 
“ The assassin bugs are about the only friends 
of man in the great and numerous clan to which 
they belong—the Hemiptera numbering around 
twenty thousand species. Their kindred are lice, 
scales, tree hoppers—which, by the way, are the 
real brownies in their odd horned, peaked, or 
three-cornered caps—the aphids, chinch bugs, 
and like pests which prey upon plants and men, 
biting their tissues and sucking their life blood. 
Root and branch they are such an injurious, ob¬ 
noxious race that Sharp, in writing of them, says: 
‘ If anything were to exterminate the enemies of 
the Hemiptera, we ourselves should probably be 
starved in the course of a few months.’ And it is 
only too true; for rapidly as these pests multiply 
and as tireless as they are in the hunt, they would 
soon possess the face of the earth.” 
“Apropos,” said Father, “ I was reading the 
other day that entomologists have discovered a 
way to wipe out chinch bugs with chinch bugs. 
It seems that there is a plague which when once 
loosed among them kills them by the million. So, 
when the government officials get word that the 
chinch bugs are on a rampage in any particular 
territory, they ship in sick bugs by the box full. 
Shortly the disease spreads among the marauders 
and the foe is vanquished.” 
“ One of our best natural enemies of the chinch 
bug is the quail, isn’t it? ” asked Tommy. “And 
