The Insect Folk Part 27

Near the city of Mexico there are species that lay enormous quant.i.ties of eggs in the ponds, and what do you think? The Indians mix these eggs with meal, make them into cakes, and eat them.

The Mexican bugs are gathered by the ton, too, and sent to England as food for cage birds, fish, and poultry.

Little Nell thinks there must be a great many bugs in a ton. Indeed, there are, probably about twenty-five millions of them; so you can imagine Mexico is well supplied with water boatmen!

When the young ones hatch out they look like their parents, only, of course, they are tiny little dots of things that have no wings.

But they eat and grow and moult like other larvae until they are full-grown insects.

What have you discovered, Ned? You look surprised.

The water boatman has no antennae!

It doesn't seem to have any. But look carefully and I think you will find some tiny ones tucked away under its head.

Nell wants to know if the water boatman has a thorax and an abdomen.

Indeed, it has, but you will have to look carefully to see them. Its abdomen is short and thick and hard. The water boatman is much more compact in form than the Orthoptera, or any of the other insects we have studied.

You are right, John, an insect with a long abdomen, like the gra.s.shopper, could not get on very well in the water.

Now, May, take the cover off the tumbler. There!

Our water boatman was not slow to make use of his wings.

Well, good-by and good luck to you, little water boatman.

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THE FUNNY BACK-SWIMMERS

What, John? You know a water boatman that swims on its back?

That makes Nell laugh, and no wonder.

Yes, there is a little bug that swims on its back.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

It is very much like the water boatman, and it has long paddles made of its queer hind legs.

Unlike the water boatman, however, its back is not flat but is shaped like the keel of a boat.

This being the case, it just turns over and swims with its keel-shaped back in the water.

It is sometimes called the back-swimmer, and most boys are well acquainted with it.

What do you think about catching it in your fingers, Ned?

Ah, you do not like to!

It has a very sharp beak for sucking the life out of other insects, and if you succeed in getting hold of it, it will stick that into your finger.

And my! how it does sting!

It is not an easy matter to catch it, however,--it is such a quick little rascal.

THE GIANT WATER BUG

[Ill.u.s.tration]

A good many kinds of bugs live in the water, but perhaps the oddest of all is the giant water bug.

It _is_ a giant!

Have you ever seen very large, flat brown bugs lying on the ground under the electric street lamps?

Those are the giant water bugs.

They fly in the night from pond to pond, and are attracted by bright lights.

They fly into the electric lights, and are killed in great numbers sometimes.

This is such a common habit with them that in some places they are called electric light bugs.

A good many people never saw these bugs until they were found dead under the electric lights, and so they imagined they did not exist until electric lights were invented.

But that is a very foolish notion; the bugs were here thousands of years before electric lights were dreamed of.

The giant water bugs are not pleasant to handle when alive.

If you ever succeed in catching one in the water, which is not easy, they slip about so quickly, be sure and not take it in your fingers.

The California children call a species they have there "toe-biters," and they say they bite their toes when they go in wading.

The giant water bugs are the largest of living bugs, and they even kill and eat fish.

Their fore legs can shut up like a jackknife. The tibia shuts into a groove in the femur, and thus the bug is able to seize and hold its prey.

It clasps its victim in its arms, as it were, and calmly proceeds to suck out its blood.