Insect Pests of House and Garden. 



657 



flannels covered with the powders. The fly-screens used on doors and 

 windows will doubtless keep many of the beetles that are out doors 

 feeding on flowers from entering the house and laying their eggs for a 

 destructive crop of the brown, hairy larvae. 



III. Cockroaches. 



Cockroaches are among the most offensive of household-insect pests. 

 They have a very long pedigree, as fossil remains of roaches occurred 

 in abundance in the early coal formations, ages before the more com- 

 mon forms of insect life of the present day had begun to appear. Four 

 different kinds of roaches often enter American houses, but it is the 

 smallest one, known as the German cockroach or croton-bug (Fig. 23), 

 that usually disgusts the New York 

 housewife. The American or native 

 roach often measures two inches in 

 length, while the croton-bug is but 

 little over half an inch long. Atten- 

 tion was first prominently drawn to 

 this little roach about the time of 

 the completion of the Croton sys- 

 tem of waterworks in New York 

 city. The dampness of water pipes 

 is favorable to it, and the extension 

 of this great waterworks system 

 afforded it an easy means of getting 



into residences, so that it came to be known as the croton-bug. The 

 eggs of roaches instead of being laid separately are brought together 

 within the abdomen of the mother into a hard, horny pod or capsule, 

 which often nearly fills the body of the parent. The female carries this 

 pod about (Fig. 23) for weeks until the young roaches are ready to hatch. 

 The young look much like the adult, simply differing in size and lacking 

 wings. Roaches develop slowly, the croton-bug requiring nearly six 

 months to reach its full growth. Roaches are practically omnivorous, 

 feeding on almost any dead animal matter, cereal products and food 

 materials of all sorts, often gnawing woolens and doing much damage 

 to the bindings of books in libraries, the paste on which is very attrac- 

 tive to them. They are night marauders, their extremely flat bodies 

 allowing them to hide in the smallest cracks and crevices during the 

 day. Whenever they occur in large numbers they leave a distinct 



Fig. 23. Cockroach carrying its egg cap- 

 sule, natural size; and a simple device 

 jar trapping cockroaches, mtich reduced. 



