Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/510

 Insect Grotesques Which

��Assume Friq'htful

���Above, a good instance of the grotesqueness of many of the hving insects which make up the Membracidae, of which more than eight hundred species have been found

At right, the well-known Bra- zilian "thorn-bug," one of the insects, which looks exactly like a big thorn when it is at rest. Its shell is hard and the protruding points are sharp

���Another quaint M c m b r a c i d. The use, if any, of the strange extension of the prothorax is un- known. It is part of the "back- plate" that Na- ture has worked upon to produce the varied and wonderful forms for which these insects are so remarkable

��4'J«

�� �