THE BED-BUG 297 



and the lurking, nocturnal, and obscure habits of the 

 insects themselves, caused their true origin, like that of 

 many another insect pest, to remain for a long time 

 unknown, and indeed unsought. Their constant associa- 

 tion with uncleanly conditions resulted in their presence 

 being accounted for by a recourse to that common refuge 

 of ignorance, the doctrine of spontaneous generation, and 

 by this convenient hypothesis the occurrence of all small 

 creatures whose real origin was unknown was explained 

 away, even down to comparatively recent times. So 

 acute and painstaking an observer as Harvey, the dis- 

 coverer of the circulation of the blood, falls into the 

 commonly received error, and speaks of " grubs and 

 earth-worms, and those that are engendered of putre- 

 faction, and do not preserve their species." In Aristotle's 

 time it was believed that bugs originated from the sweat 

 of animals. And even when we come down to a period 

 of 2000 years later, so full of vitality is error, Mouffet, 

 from whose treatise we have already quoted, states, 

 without any hesitation, and, in fact, with strong asse- 

 veration, that they arise from juices which exude from 

 wood, and from putrefying moisture around beds(!); 

 the latter, let us hope, a gross libel on the sanitary 

 arrangements of his time. He mentions also a current 

 popular belief that new bugs arise, hydra-like, from the 

 crushed remains of other bugs a belief which, one 

 would have thought, would have operated largely in 

 favour of the persecuted ; for who would crush one if 

 thereby two were created 1 



Bugs are extremely tenacious of life, and, being so 

 thin of body, a multitude of them can pack themselves 

 away in the narrowest cracks and crevices, placing their 

 legs in the same plane as the body ; hence the difficulty 

 of eradicating them if they once obtain a firm lodgment 



