BUGS.
175
some larvae being vegetarian, some carnivorous and others,
perhaps the majority, general feeders. Sap, fruit-juices and
the juices of caterpillars, flies and other insects, including bugs,
are all laid under contribution, and the nymphs and adults are
quite as active and feed just as freely as the larvae. Most of
them are probably easy to rear, even the aquatic ones, provided the
proper food is known. This is, unfortunately, always the initial
difficulty, the finding of a specimen on any particular plant being
no guarantee that it feeds on that plant, as its food may be other
insects which frequent the plant in question.
The plants principally inhabited by Heteroptera belong to
the Leguminosae, Rosaceae, Umbelliferae, Compositae and
Ericaceae, also trees, shrubs and mosses. On the other hand,
bugs are rarely found on the Ranunculaceae, Cruciferae, Caryo-
phyllaceae, Scrophulariaceae, Labiatae, Sedges, Rushes, Lichens,
Algae or Fungi, and no case of their frequenting the Orchidaceae
is on record.
It seems probable that most species pass the winter in the
egg state, but some of the Pentatomidae are known to hibernate
as adults, under bark, at the roots of plants and in other secluded
spots.
Cases of maternal care of the young larvae have been recorded.
Elasmucha grisea, one of the common Pentatomids, furnishes
the best known example of this, and the Rev. J. Hellins, of
Exeter, relates (in the Entomologist's Monthly Magazine, vol.
xi., p. 42), that in June 1871 he observed that a female of this
species, after depositing a batch of some three dozen eggs, took her
stand over them, and that when they hatched some three weeks
later, the larvae clustered under their mother. Other instances
in this species have been recorded by E. Parfitt, of Exeter, and
the well-known French naturalist, De Geer, and other observers,
from which it appears that the mother not only broods the young
when very small, but looks after them generally, resenting
interference with them by fluttering her wings and leading them
under shelter during rain. Mr. Hellins thought that the mother
abstained from food whilst brooding the eggs or young, and the
Abbe Pierre noticed that the usual effluvium was suppressed
whilst the brooding lasted, but again became evident after
the eggs had hatched. Another species which evinces adult
interest in the young is our only known marine bug, Aepophilus