282 INSECTS AND MAN 



bug in the shape of Conorhinus sanguisugus, popularly 

 known as the blood-sucking cone-nose, the Mexican bed 

 bug, or the big bed bug. Having stated that it feeds on 

 the bed bug, we have quickly summarised its good points, 

 for it efficiently takes the place of its smaller relative as a 

 noxious insect, partially parasitic on mankind. Most of 

 the members of the genus are natives of South America, 

 and many of them live upon other insects indeed, they are 

 the normal food of sanguisugus ; its taste for human blood 

 is evidently acquired, and may have arisen, in part, from 

 the fact that it shows a partiality for bed bugs distended 

 with the blood of man. 



The adult is fully an inch long, with a much-flattened 

 body, and a long narrow head armed with a formidable 

 beak or rostrum. It is dark brown in colour, striped and 

 spotted with pink. In habit it resembles the bed bug in 

 feeding by night and hiding by day; in odour it easily 

 excels its relative. 



The female lays her white eggs in masses out of doors, 

 not having acquired the domestic habit to the full. Each 

 egg is of an oval shape and provided with a lid or operculum, 

 through which the larva emerges. The young appear in 

 about three weeks, but before that time the eggs have 

 changed through various shades of cream to yellow and 

 finally pink. The larvae are sluggish and wingless and 

 they feed solely upon other insects, hence the necessity of 

 their hatching out of doors ; after two moults they reach 

 the pupal stage and acquire wing pads ; two further moults 

 occur and they attain their full growth, wings, and often a 

 taste for human blood. In the Mississippi and Arizona 

 valleys they are especially abundant. 



The effect of a bite from the cone-nose is often of a 

 serious nature, and at best is exceedingly painful. At 

 times the bites are followed by such serious after-effects as 

 to lead to the supposition that some poison is injected, but 

 whether this is a specific poison occurring in the insect's 



