: THE BEDBUG. 5 
daylight. It usually leaves its victim as soon as it has become 
engorged with blood and retires to its normal place of concealment, 
either in cracks in the bedstead, especially if the latter be one of the 
wooden variety, or behind wainscoting, or under loose wall paper, 
and in these and similar places it manifests its gregarious habit by 
collecting in masses. It thrives particularly in filthy apartments 
and in old houses which are full of cracks and crevices, in which it 
can conceal itself beyond easyreach. As justnoted the old-fashioned, 
heavy, wooden-slatted bedsteads afford especially favorable situa- 
tions for the concealment and multiplication of this insect, and the 
general use in later years of iron and brass bedsteads has very greatly 
facilitated its eradication. Such beds, however, do not insure safety, 
as the insects are able to find places of concealment even about such 
beds, or get to them readily from their other hiding places. 
Extraordinary stories are current of the remarkable intelligence of 
this insect in circumventing various efforts to prevent its gaining 
access to beds. Most of these are undoubtedly exaggerations, but 
the inherited experience of many centuries of companionship with 
man, during which the bedbug has always found its host an active 
enemy, has resulted in a knowledge of the habits of the human 
animal and a facility of concealment, particularly as evidenced by 
its abandoning beds and often going to distant quarters for protec- 
tion and hiding during daylight, which indicate considerable apparent 
intelligence. 
Like its allies, the bedbug undergoes what is known as an incom- 
plete metamorphosis. In other words, the insect from its larval to 
its adult stage is active and similar in form, structure, and habit, 
contrasting with flies and moths in their very diverse life stages of 
larva, chrysalis, or pupa, and winged adult. 
The eggs (fig. 3,d) are white oval objects having a little projecting 
rim around one edge and may be found in batches of from 6 to 50 
in cracks and crevices where the parent bugs go for concealment. 
In confinement eggs may be deposited almost daily over a period 
of two months or more and commonly at the rate of from one to 
five eggs per day, but sometimes much larger batches are laid. As 
many as 190 eggs have been thus obtained from a single captured 
female. 
The eggs hatch in a week or 10 days in the hot weather of mid- 
summer, but cold may lengthen or even double this egg period or 
check development altogether. The young escape by pushing up the 
lid-like top with its projecting rim. When first emerged (fig. 3, a, b) 
they are yellowish white and nearly transparent, the brown color of 
the more mature insect increasing with the later molts (fig. 4). 
1 Girault, A. A. Preliminary studies on the biology cf the bedbug, Cimex lectularius, Linn. IIT. 
Facts obtained concerning the habits of the adult. Jn Jour. Econ. Biol., v. 9, no. 1, p. 25-45. 1914, 
