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THE BEDBUG, CLIXOCORIS LECl'ULARIUS^ (LINNAEUS), AND 
THE EOWL BUG, CLIXOCORIS COLUMBARIUS (JENA NS) : 
HOST RELATIONS. 
Adults and larvae attack dead and living mice {Mus ) ; columhartus feeds on human blood. 
UY ALKC. ARSkXE OIRAULT AND JOHN FRANK STRAUSS, WASHINr.TON, 1). C. 
I. Clinocoris lecUilarius (Linnaeus). 
In e.xperimental medicine, the host relations of our common bedbug are of 
importance from the fact that if they attack animals other than man, their scope 
in the potential transmission of diseases becomes greatly enlarged. In review- 
ing the entire entomological and medical literature, as far as it concerns the 
bedbug, the writers have been unable to come to any definite conclusion concern- 
ing these host relations. As far as the entomological literature is concerned, no 
conclusions at all are possible, for the simple reason that authorities differ, anti 
that no definite e.xperiments have been cited to show that the host of the bedbug 
is other than man himself. In fact, most of the statements to the contrary are 
purely conjectural or theoretical. 
In the literature of e.xperimental medicine, however, it has been quite fre- 
quently stated that bedbugs attack mice, living and dead, and these mice were 
so used in the e.xperiments performed. But the statements of these facts have 
been so general, and in a way, so unscientific, that the writers could not, in 
strict justice, come to any other conclusion than that it was very probable that 
leciularius attacked animals other than man. Nuttall ( 1897, 189S), in his most 
important experiments on the transmission of di.seases by the bedbug, however, 
nearly convinces us that both living and dead mice are readily attacked by lectu- 
larius, but doubt could not be eliminated, because of the use of the general 
term 'tcauzen instead of a specific name, and on account of the presence of a 
single ambiguous sentence (Nuttall, 1898, p. 626, footnote). 
Correspondence with some of the leading hemipterists and personal com- 
munications from economic entomologist.s, all tend to throw doubt on the state- 
ments thus made in the medical literature. Scepticism coming from such 
sources cannot be better evidence, and practically shows that the question 
remains as yet unsettled. 
^Clinocoris is masculine, not feminine, as would be inferred from its ending. (Kirkaldy.) 
