It has great search features and has provided me with a lot of great information that I wasn't able to find anywhere else. It's also a nice resource for finding beautiful old pictures of plants and animals, which led me to search it today for a picture of the wheel bug. Instead, I happened upon a page from a circular released by the United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Entomology in 1904.
Instead of finding info about the wheel bug, I found a paragraph written by someone who did not like ambush bugs:
"A small, evil-smelling plant-bug, Phymata wolffii Tal. (fig. 6), secretes itself in flowers, such as thistle and goldenrod, and destroys numbers of the butterflies, capturing them and sucking out their vital fluids."You just don't get that kind of bluntness nowadays; it's refreshing. The butterflies the circular is referring to are individuals of the imported Cabbage White Butterfly (Pieris rapae), if you were wondering.
For your viewing pleasure, figure 6 is below. Keep in mind that this little ambush bug is only about half an inch long.
Love the Biodiversity Heritage Library! It's a real treasure trove.
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