ioo The Book of Bugs. 



Quite a fuss is made from time to time about the 

 44 kissing-bug," which bites pretty girls on their ripe 

 red lips and hurts like the mischief. Also it makes 

 the victims' faces swell up till they look like the faces 

 on the doughnut men that grandma used to throw 

 into the hot fat for us long time ago. (I hear that in 

 some parts of the country grandma still does that. She's 

 a real nice relation, grandma is.) Well, this kissing- 

 bug has a hard name that means blood-sucking cone-nose. 

 It gets into the beds sometimes in the great South- 

 western country, and it is truly a biter from Bitersville. 

 When it jabs in its beak it fairly spraddles itself 

 out and takes solid comfort as well as liquid food. 

 Victims lose the use of their limbs for two or 

 three days sometimes. But the blood-sucking cone- 

 nose lives out of doors and only flies into the 

 houses at night. They have not yet 

 come to live with man, and so long as 

 there is such a thing on the market as 

 wire gauze it is not probable that they 

 will. 



And now we come to another kind 

 T?- //, of bugf that sucks blood and has lost 



r ig. 22. fCal- <-> 



cuius capitis, its wings and is thoroughly domesticated. 



the head-louse. T r T i 1 r i i A 



If I was too bashful to come right 

 out with the name of the terror by night, I am 

 downright ashamed even to have to hint that these 

 other things exist. And yet to be ashamed is really 

 something to be proud of. There are some pretty 

 good poets nowadays as poets go, though they are 

 all a trifling lot, but not one of them would dare 

 do what Robert Burns did. We have progressed a long 

 way since he penned that clever poem about what he saw 

 crawling on the lady's neck that sat in the pew in front 



