BUGS. 113 



undoubtedly natives of a warm country, for they like 

 a high temperature, and are benumbed in winter, 

 although experiments have been made in which an 

 exposure to a temperature of five degrees below 

 of Fahrenheit did them no harm. Like reptiles, they 

 can also live many years without food, as the German 

 naturalist Goeze has proved, who kept them alive six 

 years without any nourishment. 



Kotzebue, then colonel in the general staff of the 

 Russo-Caucasian Army in Yiflis, assured me, when I 

 was there (1825), that he has seen several persons, 

 when travelling in Persia, victims of the venomous 

 bite of the Persian Bug. 



This Insect, though it is neither a native of North 

 America, nor does it belong to the Hemipterous Order, 

 is too notorious to pass over in silence. 



The Persian Bug (Agras Persicus) is similar to a 

 Bed-bug in colour and form, but a little larger, and 

 provided with jaws. It has long been known as the 

 venomous bug of Miana in Persia, which city lays 

 south from Tauris. That same Mr. Kotzebue, the 

 son of the celebrated unfortunate German poet, August 

 Kotzebue, Russian Councillor of State, who was as- 

 sassinated 1818, in Manheim, by the student Sand, 

 went as attache to the Russian Embassy of General 

 Yermoloff to Teheran, and published afterwards in 



Germany, his "Travels through Persia," in which he 

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