THE BEDBUG. 7 



daylight. It usually leaves its victim as soon as it has become 

 engorged with blood and retu'es to its normal place of concealment, 

 either in cracks in the bedstead, especially if the latter be one of the 

 wooden A^ariety, or behind wamscoting, 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 easy reach. As just noted 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. wSuch 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. 



Extraordmary stories are current of the remarkable intelhgence 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 wliich the bedbug has always found its host an active 

 enemy, has resulted in a knowledge of the habits of the human 

 animal and a facihty of concealment, particidarly as evidenced by 

 its abandoning beds and often gomg to distant quarters for protec- 

 tion and liiding 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 msect 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 

 live eggs per day, but sometimes much larger batches are laid. As 

 many as 190 eggs have been thus obtamed 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, h) 

 they are yellowish white and nearly transparent, the brown color of 

 the more mature insect increasing with the later molts (fig. 4). 



1 Oirault, A. A, Preliminary studies on the biology of the bedbug, Cimrz lectularim. Linn. III. 

 Fact.'^ ol)tained concerning the habits oi the adult. In Jour. Econ. Biol., v. 9. no. 1, p. 25-')5. 1911. 



