Little Mrs. Shore Bug
May says she wants to hear more about bugs. Well, there is little Mrs. Shore Bug. I think you must all know her.
She is the little bug that flies along in front of you on the seashore, or, indeed, on the edge of any body of water.
Little Mrs. Shore Bug
She flits along just in front of you, and is so quick in her motions that you will hardly ever catch her.
She does not fly far—she alights just far enough ahead to make you try again to capture her, but when you think you have her, she isn't there!
She has sped off on one of her short flights, and so she will continue to do as long as you continue to chase her.
The Airy Water Striders
Then there are the water striders.
They are bugs, and it is easy to guess how they got their name.
You surely remember the longlegged, dark colored fellows that straddle about on top of the water, in ponds or in still pools in streams?
Who has not tried to catch them!
And how very seldom any one succeeds!
May knows where we can see some water striders close at hand.
They are on the pond in the meadow. Let us go.
Ah, you little ones! There you are, scampering over the water on your airy, fairy feet, as though you were on dry land.
The Airy Water Striders
How they flash about! And what cunning dimples their little feet make on the water when they stand still!
If we keep very quiet, they will stop darting about in that wild way, and we can see them better.
Now, water striders, why do you behave so, and what do you eat?
Eat? Why, insects, of course. And as to behavior, they may well wonder more at ours than we at theirs.
They skate about on the surface of the water all summer, and when winter comes they hide away at thebottom of the pond, right under the water, or along the edges of the banks.
When the warm spring sunshine wakes up the sleeping plants, then the little water striders wake up too.
Out they come, to resume their endless skating and insect catching, but now they lay their eggs, gluing them fast to water weeds.
The young water striders look like their parents, and they, too, like to go circling and flashing over the top of the water, with their long legs spread out.
What do you suppose is in this box?
Little Nell may open it.
There, out he comes—slowly, as though he were looking around and thinking about it.
A Queer Fellow
May says, "Hello, Mr. Walking Stick, you here again?"
Ho! ho!isit Mr. Walking Stick?
You look again.
Mollie thinks, if she were going to name it, she would call it Mr. Walking Threads.
Yes, it is more slender than even the walking stick.
What is that, John? You thought insects had six legs, and this has only four?
Now, here is something for us to think about.
Ned says it has six long threads that might be legs, but it does not walk on the two front ones.
It seems to use them as antennæ.
A Queer Fellow
Ned says those front ones look to him to be jointed just like the others, and he thinks they are legs.
Mollie says they have no little feet like the others, and she thinks they are antennæ.
Well, well, what are we to do? Think of its having feelers that look like legs or legs that look like feelers, so that you cannot tell which they are!
Now it is beginning to move, and—Oh, ho, that long part in front is not its head!
A Queer Fellow
See, it separates into two—what?
Surely, two front legs.
See, they were folded up, somewhat like the front legs of the mantis, only these could fold close together, being threadlike.
So the long threads are antennæ after all.
Now it has raised its head, which we easily see is quite round, with tiny eyes, and the antennæ are growing out from the front of it.
What is it? A walking stick? A mantis?
A Queer Fellow
Why! why! There it goes, sailing off in the air with a queer little fluttering motion of its whole body.
It has wings!
John has caught it and brought it back.
Now let us see those wings, you strange little creature.
You will have to look close, but there they are, narrow, short, such tiny wings! Howdoyou suppose it flies with them?
You seem queerer and queerer the more we look at you, little what-shall-we-call-you.
But we know you are not a walking stick because our walking sticks have no wings.
The truth is you are a—bug!
Yes, this little threadlike creature belongs to the same order as the big flat giant water bug.
It grasps its victim, in its fore feet like the mantis, but instead of biting its prey it sucks out the juices.
You would hardly expect such a delicate creature to catch and kill other insects, yet such is the case.
No, I do not think it will pierce your finger with its beak. I have often handled them, and have never been stung by one. We often see them walking about in the grass and along paths.
Hawthorn TwigHawthorn Twig
Ifwe pay a visit to that hawthorn bush we shall probably find a bug to our liking. Yes, here is one.
It is a tiny thing, I know, but wait until you see it under the microscope.
Ah, I thought you would be pleased!
Nell says it looks as though it had on a lace party dress.
Is it not a dainty fairy!
We call it the lace bug.
The Well Dressed Lace Bug
It does not suck the juices of other insects, but instead it sucks the juices of plants.
Its eggs are very curious. It lays them on leaves and glues them fast. They look like little out-growths of the leaf.
The young lace bugs are like their parents in form, only, of course, they have no wings and so they are not pretty.
Fairy lace bug, we are glad to make your acquaintance.
A Bad Bug
Now, here is a bug we all loathe. It is round and flat, and reddish brown in color, and it has a disgusting odor.
But though we hate this bug, it is very fond of us. It has a short, sharp tube folded down under its head, and this tube it likes to raise up and stick into the skin of people, and suck out their blood.
It has no wings, only a pair of little scales where its wings should be. Yes, May, these scales are rudimentary wings, and they are good for nothing. It once hadwings, but it preferred to go slipping about in cracks and hiding in beds, until in course of time no wings grew, which served it right.
It has antennæ and eyes and spiracles; indeed, it has everything a bug should have but wings and good manners.
We call it the bed bug because its favorite home is in beds, so that it can sally forth at night and feast upon its sleeping victims.
It lays its eggs in cracks and crevices, and each egg is like a little jar with a rim and a lid at the top. When the young one hatches it pushes off the lid. The young are in shape like their parents, only they are very light colored, and almost transparent. They look like ghosts of bugs, but they are very voracious ghosts indeed, and they eat and moult and grow and become darker colored until they reach maturity.
One strange thing about them is that they can live a very long time with nothing to eat, so that houses long vacated may still contain these nuisances, that sally forth, eager to round out their emaciated forms at the expense of the new occupants of the house.
The barn swallow is sadly afflicted by a species of these unwelcome visitors to its nest, and the poor bats are also victimized by a species of bed bug.
The bad odor comes from a liquid poured out of theback of young bugs, and from the under side of old ones.
These insects are very undesirable acquaintances, and they breed so fast that even one, brought into a house, may cause it to become generally infested in a few weeks.
Eternal vigilance and great cleanliness are the housekeeper's only safeguards.
There are some species of bugs that closely resemble the bed bugs, only they have wings, and live on flowers or in the cracks of the bark of trees.
The Troublesome Red Bug
There are a great many kinds of bugs on the leaves and flowers in summer, and some of them do much damage by eating the vegetation.
One of the most troublesome of these is the red bug. Here is a picture of one.
Its wings look as if they had an X drawn on them.
Let us spread out one of the wings.
Why do you all laugh?
Sure enough, Ned, howcanwe spread out the wings of a bug in a picture?
The Troublesome Red Bug
But there is a way out of that difficulty.
Yes, another picture.
Only the upper wings are spread out.
You see, the half of the wing next the body is stiff like a wing cover, and the other half is thin and silky, and folds up under the stiff part. When the insect flies it spreads out the under wings, too, for there is a pair of thin, flying wings folded on the body under these upper wings.
These upper wings, that are half wing cover and half flying wing, are characteristic of the bug order.
Not all the bugs have them, but a great many have.
The name of the bug order isHem-ip-tera, meaning half-wing. You see why.
Yes, John, the word "hemiptera" comes from two Greek words,hemi, meaning half, and, as you know,pteron, meaning a wing.
The young red bugs are like the old ones, excepting in color.
What do we call the young of insects, little Nell?
Yes, we call them larvæ. These red bug larvæ are bright red with black legs.
They pierce the cotton plants in the South, and suck out the juices.
Of course, they grow and moult until they arrive at the adult form.
What, John? You do not know what "adult" means? Adult means "grown-up."
It is a short way of saying grown-up; and after this, when we mean a grown-up insect, let us say an adult insect.
To return to the red bug. When it reaches the adult state, it is not such a bright red, but rather of a reddish color with brownish wings striped with light yellow.
Beside eating the juices of the cotton plants and thus injuring or even killing them, the red bugs stain the white cotton and spoil it.
They are also troublesome in some parts of Florida, where they pierce the skins of the oranges, and cause the fruit to decay.
The Troublesome Red Bug
There are a great many bugs injurious to vegetation, among them the little chinch bugs.
They are so small, each one no larger than a plant louse, that you would not think they could do much harm.
One of them could not, but when they appear in millions, then they are terrible.
Here is one magnified to show the white wing covers with black markings.
The Ravenous Chinch Bugs
Would you believe that this tiny insect has destroyed millions of dollars' worth of grain in the United States?
What, Charlie? you should think they could be killed out? That is a very difficult task. You see they are so small, and they breed so fast. There are two broods of them in one year, and when they have eaten one grain field they start off, millions strong, to another.
Of course a great many methods have been tried for getting rid of them, and one very curious method you will like to hear about.
You know insects are subject to diseases.
What, Nell, you never heard of a sick bug?
Yet it seems they are sick sometimes, and certain diseases kill them. Chinch bugs are not as healthy in some places as in others.
There is a contagious disease that kills them off in very great numbers.
Ned says he can guess what remedy the people apply to the healthy chinch bugs that are eating their grain.
Yes, they introduce diseased chinch bugs into the grain fields with the healthy ones. The contagion spreads and the bugs die!
There is another way of getting rid of some kinds of troublesome insects. That is, to introduce an insect not injurious to vegetation, that will prey upon the injurious ones.
One of the bugs we know the best and like the least is the stink bug.
It deserves its name.
John says he had one on his hand this morning.
How did you like it, John?
Did any of you ever pick berries where these bugs were?
See what a face Mollie is making! It is very evident thatshehas.
Red raspberryRed raspberry
What a nasty taste they give the delicious fruit.
Even the flavor of the red raspberry is spoiled if one of these bugs pollutes it.
What makes them smell so? May is asking.
The disgusting odor is caused by a liquid that is ejected out of little pores on the under side of the thorax.
The bug can eject this liquid when it pleases.
The Airy Water Striders
Most members of the bug order can eject a disagreeable liquid, though few of them do it so successfully as the stink bug.
If the stink bug is not disturbed, it does not give forth the bad odor; but when we jostle the bushes in getting the berries, that startles it, and we get the benefit of its alarm.
Yes, undoubtedly the bugs make a bad odor for the same reason the grasshoppers make molasses. They wish to repel their enemies.
Very few birds ever touch a stink bug.
Nell thinks a bird would be crazy to eat a stink bug.
Mollie says if it were not crazy when it began, it surely would be before it got through!
Not only the bugs make these disagreeable odors.
Many other insects do.
The cockroaches, as we know, and one reason we dislike them so is because of this offensive odor.
Some species of crickets, too, and indeed many, many insects give forth odors from glands that exist just for that purpose.
No, indeed, these odors are not all alike. Some have a strangling quality like ammonia, and sometimes the odors are not disagreeable. Some insects have sweet odors, like perfumes.
The Well Protected Stink Bug
The pleasant odors are not used to repel, but to attract.
If an insect wishes to see its mate, it may be able to give forth a pleasant odor that will reach a long way through the air, and the mate, smelling it, will follow it to its source. You see, this pleasant odor is one way of talking; at least it is one way of sending a message.
Insects can detect odors much better than we can.
No doubt many insects produce odors that affect other insects, but that are so faint we cannot smell them at all.
The sense of smell, even in the human being, is very wonderful. It is the keenest of all the senses.
You have studied weights and measures, and you know how small a quantity a grain of anything is. Well, you will be astonished to know that your nose can detect the presence of 1/2,760,000,000 of a grain of mercaptan, a substance having a very bad smell.
The Well Protected Stink Bug
So you see, insects that can smell very, very much better than we would be greatly influenced by the odors of other insects.
Some of the stink bugs, although so disagreeable if disturbed, are very useful to us, as they eat other insects injurious to vegetation.
Most of them, however, eat fruits and vegetables, and some species do a vast amount of mischief.
Yes, John, lice are bugs, and very mean bugs too.
They have lived at the expense of other creatures so long that they cannot exist unless they have a living body to feed on.
Here is a picture of one very much enlarged. No wings, no beauty, a pale white thing, all claws and mouth.
The Louse
It has a long sucking tube by which it pierces the skin, and a sucking stomach by which it pumps the blood into its mouth.
Such creatures are called parasites.
Yes, bed bugs are parasites too.
Besides the lice that live on human beings, there are species that infest animals.
Bird lice are not lice!
That is, they do not belong to the bug order.
They belong to a small order by themselves, but they are parasites like the lice.
The little white book lice that scurry away when we open an old book that has been standing on the back shelf, are not lice, either; they also belong to a little order of their own, and are constructed very differently from the true lice.
The Airy Water Striders
Whir-r-r-r-rrrrr!!
May says she wishes that locust would keep quiet. It makes her warmer than ever to hear him carrying on so this hot day.
John says it is the weather that is warm, not the song of the locust.
And yet, locusts generally sing during the hottest part of the summer, so that we have learned to associate them with warm weather.
Since we must listen to its shrill out-cry, I wish we could also see it.
Ah, that is a wish soon gratified! Here comes one out of John's pocket.
Friend Cicada
John says it isnota locust.
Ah, yes, the shorthorned grasshoppers are the real locusts, and this fellow has somehow got the name.
But it is not a locust.
It is also called the dog-day harvest fly, but it is not a fly, though it looks considerably like one.
Really, you know, it is a—bug!
Yes, it belongs to the bug order.
Its true name is cicada, and its shrill midsummer song has been famous from the beginning of time.
Friend Cicada
It looks like an enormous fly, but its mouth parts are the mouth parts of the bug, and in other respects it resembles the members of the bug order, when it is examined closely.
What glassy wings!
Let us spread them out carefully. Four of them it has.
The cicada, you see, has no wing covers. Nor are itsupper wings, half wing cover, and half wing, like those of so many of the bugs.
No, all four of its wings are alike, and all four are flying wings.
When it is at rest, the inner wings slip out of sight under the outer ones, which fold down like a roof over its body.
See how beautifully the wings, are veined.
You think cicada has a very broad back, Nell?
So it has, and a broad head.
Friend Cicada
See its black eyes on the corners of its head!
How many facets have its eyes?
I wish I knew, but I do not. This, however, I can tell you. If you look on the top of its head between its compound eyes, with a magnifying glass, you will find it has three little eyes there.
These small eyes are simple, and are calledocelli.
Many insects have ocelli, indeed, some of the grasshoppers have these extra eyes on top of their head.
May says the grasshoppers are very astonishing insects.
You think you know all about them, and you are allthe time finding out something new. You would not be apt to notice these little ocelli on the grasshopper's head, they are so small, and besides, some of the grasshoppers do not have them.
Yes, Mollie, it is the same with the crickets and katydids. Some species have ocelli, and some have not.
If you look full in the face of a cicada,Compound eyesyou can see the three little round ocelli between the compound eyes.
They show very plainly with a magnifying glass.
Indeed, it is difficult to explain what the ocelli are for.
Some think they are to see objects close at hand, while the compound eyes see more distant objects.
Others think the ocelli are only capable of distinguishing light from darkness.
The Airy Water Striders
Yet others think they are merely a "survival" of the eyes of the worms. You know, way back in time, before there were winged insects there were worms. In some way the insects are descended from the worms, and though they have got rid of many of their wormlike parts they still retain some of them, and probably among these are the ocelli.
When an animal of any kind keeps organs that belonged to its ancestors, but that are of no use to it,we say these organs are "survivals." They have not yet had time wholly to disappear.
Yes, John, the time may come when the ocelli will disappear from the insects. A good many insects have lost them already.
Indeed, you are right, May; they have lost them because they did not use them. When an animal ceases to use an organ in course of time, for lack of exercise, that organ dwindles away and disappears. It generally takes a very long time for this to happen.
Yes, Mabel, thousands or even millions of years may pass before an organ that has gone out of use entirely disappears. As generations succeed each other each generation loses a little power in that organ until, finally, there is no organ left.
John is puzzled to know just what is meant by an organ. It is some particular part of the creature. An arm is an organ, a stomach is an organ, an eye is an organ. The whole creature is made up of organs, and is called anorganism.
Your whole body, John, is an organism, but your legs and arms are organs. Now, I think you understand.
Our cicada has one organ that is very interesting; it is the little apparatus by which it sings.
Turn it over, Ned, and all of you look at the twothin plates lying against the abdomen just below the thorax.
Those membranes are like two little kettle drums, and they are its song organs.
There are other membranes beneath them, and large muscles within the body to move the membranes.
The membranes being set in rapid vibration we get the shrill cry of the locust.
Only the male has the kettle drums. In the female these organs are rudimentary, and she is dumb.
Kettle drumKettle drum
Cicada, you are a pretty little thing with your clear, glasslike wings and your black body with red and green trimming. See its mouth lying in that little groove under its head. It is a tube, and sharp. The cicada sticks it into a leaf or young twig to suck out the juice.
Nell wants to know if the young cicadas are like the old ones. Indeed, they would be cunning little things if they were, and—yes, theywouldlook very much like flies.
But the young cicadas are queer babies, indeed. They do not look very much like their parents, although they have a head, a thorax, and an abdomen.
Friend Cicada
The female cicada makes a slit in the bark of the tree twig withher ovipositor and lays the eggs there. As soon as they hatch out, the tiny cicadas drop down to the ground and burrow into the earth.
You would not know that they are cicadas, they are such queer-looking little things. But they have strong, sucking mouth parts with which they pierce holes in the roots of trees and suck out the juices.
Of course these larvæ grow and moult and continue to do so until they have moulted a good many times and grown quite large.
They stay down under the ground two years.
At the end of that time they crawl up to the surface of the earth in the early summer.
They climb trees, or weeds, or fence posts, and then the skin splits down the back for the last time, and out comes a full-grown cicada with bright glassy wings.
The wings of the larva do not grow at each moult like the wings of the grasshopper.
The larva never gets beyond short little wing pads. See John's eyes twinkling! I believe—yes, he has! He has brought us the cast-off skin of a cicada to look at.
Friend Cicada
Why, John, you are like a good fairy to us to-day, giving us just the things we want just when we want them.
Now, see this little shell. See the front legs, likestrong paws to dig with. And see its little glassy eyes, and its little wing pads!
It is a perfect cast of the cicada larva.
The Airy Water Striders
Yes, May, this little cast is made of chitin, and it will last a long time. Chitin is a very indestructible substance; even fire will not destroy it, but in course of time the moisture and the acids in the earth destroy it, so that at last the millions of cicada shells and grasshopper cast-off skins, which are also of chitin, and cricket moults, and all the other little cast-aside chitinous overcoats of the insects, return again to the earth and the air whence they came. The minerals and gases that compose them let go of each other, as it were, and the chitin is no longer chitin.
Amy says she has seen these little cicada shells hundreds of times but did not know what they were.
Yes, we are sure to find them almost every summer.
If we look, we will also find other larvæ shells. Down in the grass are the cast-off coats of the grasshoppers and the crickets.
All we need do is to look, and we shall be sure to find them—like unsubstantial ghosts of the active little wearers.
No doubt you all have heard of the seventeen-year locusts. They, too, are cicadas, and they look very muchlike this one, only it takes the young ones seventeen years to complete their growth.
Friend Cicada
Think of living in the ground and sucking the juices out of the earth and of tree roots for seventeen years!
How would you like to do it?
But no doubt the cicada is quite happy living in this way.
At the end of seventeen years the cicadas come up out of the earth in great swarms.
They cast their skins for the last time. The queer little shells are seen everywhere, and the air resounds with the songs of the freed prisoners.
Friend Cicada
In the South it takes only thirteen years for these cicadas to develop.
I once went up the side of a beautiful mountain in North Carolina, where was such a mighty host of cicadas in the trees that I could not hear my companion speak, and a little way off the noise sounded like a torrent of rushing water.
Why, little Nell! What is the matter?
You do wish the frogs would stop spitting on the grass?
Let me see; why, poor child, she is all covered with frog spittle.
That is kind, Ned. See, he is wiping her apron off with some fresh, clean leaves. Let us rest awhile under this shady tree.
John, pick that grass blade with the frog spittle on it. Be careful not to disturb it.
The Odd Spittle Insect
There is a surprise in store for you; this white frothy substance that is so abundant in some places in the summer and that looks like spittle is—guess what?
Frog spittle, May says. So you think the frogs spit on the grass do you? They must be tall frogs to reach up so high.
With this little twig let us carefully brush away the white froth.
Now see.
Yes, there is something in the centre of it.
It is the larva of a—bug!
The Odd Spittle Insect
The female bug, and here is one of the little things, lays the egg on the leaf or twigs, and when it hatches theyoung bug sucks out the sap of the plant which finally appears as this white froth.
The larva remains surrounded by the froth until its transformations are complete.
Just before the last moult it stops sucking out sap. The froth dries about it in the form of a little room, and in this it undergoes its last moult and comes out—an adult bug.
The froth is supposed to be used as a protection, and it may be against some enemies, but there are certain wasps that delight in invading the frothy masses and hauling out the unwilling morsels within to feed to their young.
No, little Nell, the frogs have nothing whatever to do with this frothy substance which was called frog spittle before people understood about the little insect that made it.
They really thought the frogs did it.
The adult spittle insect is called a frog hopper, and it has the power of leaping very well.
The Odd Spittle Insect
Just see this bush! Be careful not to shake it.
It is covered with such pretty, bright-colored little insects.
Pretty Leaf Hoppers
There, May ran against the bush and see—they are hopping wildly off in every direction.
Yes, little Nell, they do sound like rain drops pattering on the leaves.
They are prettier than the spittle insects and more slender, but they hop about in very much the same way.
The larvæ do not make froth, however.
These are the leaf hoppers.
What big heads they have!
And how daintily their green forms are pencilled with red lines.
There are a great many species of the leaf hoppers, and not all of them are as pretty as these.
Some of them are very small indeed, and some do great damage to the grain crops and the fruits.
They suck out the juices of the plants.
Pretty Leaf Hoppers
If you sweep the insect net over bushes or throughthe grass in midsummer, you will be pretty sure to draw in a good collection of leaf hoppers.
Most of us are only too well acquainted with the rose-leaf hopper that swarms on rose bushes and kills the leaves. If we have not noticed the insect itself, we have not failed to notice the little white skins that it has cast off and left clinging to the leaves.
Yes, these are the little skins it discards when it moults.
John says we can kill them by washing the bushes with strong soap suds.
Pretty Leaf Hoppers
Ned says it is better yet to spray them.
It is better and also easier to spray them than to wash them.
You know there are machines for spraying trees and other plants. They consist of a tank to hold the liquid that is to be sprayed and a pump to force it through a rubber pipe with a sprinkler at the end.
Very often a mixture of soap and kerosene oil, known as "kerosene emulsion," is used to spray with.
Paris green and blue vitriol, both very poisonous, are often used on grape vines before the grapes are formed,and very gaudy vines they are for a little while after this bright poison has been sprayed upon them.
Although insects are so very interesting, we have to protect ourselves against many species in order to live.
Yes, John, it is oftentimes merely a question which shall profit by the crops we plant, the insects or ourselves.
Sometimes the insects win, sometimes we win, but it is a closely contested warfare all the time.
We plough the land and take care of it, we plant the seeds and keep out the weeds. Then, when we have a fine crop growing, along come certain destructive insects, feeling very happy, no doubt, to have found such a feast.
Now the fight begins. They attack the crop, we attack them. We spray them with poisons, burn up their eggs, do everything we know how to get rid of them.
Wise men have spent many years of close study finding out the habits of the insects destructive to grains and fruits, in order to be able to destroy them.
Although many of the plant hoppers are such nuisances to us, there is one family of hoppers that is seldom a nuisance.
Do you know the tree hoppers,—absurd little jokers that they are?
Oh, yes, they are hard and three cornered, like animated beechnuts, as somebody has said.
Yes, some of them have humps on their backs and some have horns.