The Aristocrat of the Kitchen. 



The Croton bug- is rather the smallest of the roach 

 population of our houses. He is five-eighths of an inch 

 in length at maturity, is light brown, with two dark 

 brown stripes on his thorax. As becomes an inhabitant 

 of this continent of great things, the Periplaneta auicri- 

 cana is the biggest, 

 though the tropical 

 ' drummer," which beats 

 rhythmically on the 

 woodwork with his 

 wings, is two inches 

 long and measures three 

 inches from tip to tip of 

 his outspread wings. It 

 is said that under the 

 equator there is a con- 

 nection of the family, 

 very gay-colored and 



fully six inches long. 

 But although 



Fig. 27. Periplaneta aits/ ralasice, the 

 Australian roach; male with outspread 

 wings, female, and pupa. 



more 



than one thousand 

 species have been described, and it is guessed that there 

 are more than five thousand in different parts of the 

 globe, at the k cinther of the wurruld ' there are only 

 four, and these are found to be a great plenty, the Ameri- 

 can roach, Pcriplancla amcricami; the Australian roach, 

 P. australasice, which, being a good sailor, fond of a rov- 

 ing life, the warmth and moisture of the forecastle, to say 

 nothing of its picturesque untidiness, is now generally 

 distributed by ocean-borne commerce; P. orientalis, the 

 Oriental cockroach, or ' black beetle," as our English 

 cousins call it, because it is not a beetle and is not black, 

 but dark brown. Last of all, and least of all, comes our 

 friend the Croton bug, Ectobia gcrmanica. 



