September 1, 1890.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



209 



THE BED-BUG.-I. 



By E. a. Butler. 



IT has already been pointed out that the migrations of 

 some insects are largely dependent upon the com- 

 HKTcial enterprise of nations, and that it is to our 

 own widely extended commerce that we can trace 

 the introduction into this island of our kitchen pest, 

 the common cockroach. We have now to consider another 

 and much less desirable importation, which we owe to a 

 similar source. The bed-bug, though now, unfortunately, 

 firmly enough established, is not indigenous here, and 

 appears to have been known as British for about the same 

 length of time as the cockroach, although it is, of course, 

 impossible to assign a definite date for its introduction. 

 Like the cockroach, it appeared first in seaport towns, 

 whence it spread to other parts ; but its advance to inland 

 regions was slow, if we may judge from a lirorhure entitled 

 A Book of BiKjiji, written by .John Southall in the year 

 1730, in which he points out that at that date, i.e. nearly 

 two hundred and fifty years after we first hear of the 

 insect, though " not one seaport in England is free from 

 them, in inland towns buggs are hardly known." The 

 earliest record of its occurrence in Britain is to be found in 

 a Latin treatise on Inserts or Minute Animals, by 

 Thomas Mouffet, published in 1634. This writer, who 

 does not state whence he obtained his information, says 

 that in the year 1508, two ladies of noble family, residing 

 at Mortlake, became greatly alarmed at finding themselves 

 one morning bug-bitten, not knowing the cause of the in- 

 flamed swellings which had appeared upon their persons, 

 and thinking they had contracted some frightful contagious 

 disease. That even at this early date the insects were not 

 entirely unknown, though certainly strange, appears from 

 the ease with which the disquietude of the noble sufl'erers 

 was allayed by their physician, who was at once able to 

 point out to them the real cause of their disfigurement. 



The inelegant monosyllable we are now accustomed to 

 use as the name of this horrid parasite does not seem to 

 have been applied to it at first ; even Moufi'et, who speaks 

 of it in Latin as Cimcr, gives as the English equivalent of 

 this, "wall-louse," but does not mention the word " bug " 

 at all. This, however, is only negative evidence ; and as 

 there appears to be an undoubted reference to the insect 

 under tlie shorter name in a play of Massinger's dated 

 twelve years earlier than Mouffets treatise, it must have 

 been at least in occasional use at that period. " Chinch " 

 is another old name for it, which appears to have become 

 e.\tinct only a generation or two ago. 



The origin of the modern name is somewhat obscure. 

 As applied to the insect, the word " bug " has usually been 

 supijosed to be identical with the old British word of the 

 same form, meaning a hobgoblin, or nocturnal apparition, 

 a word still existing in the coni|)ound " Imgbear"; and tlie 

 idea was that the name was transferred to the insect in 

 consequence of its nocturnal and disgusting habits, and the 

 alarm they occasioned when, as in the instance above 

 rci'ei red to, the cause was unknown. But, as Dr. Murray 

 |)ciints out in the now I'mglish Dictionary, this is mere 

 conjecture, and no direct evidence of the transference of 

 the name is forthcoming ; hence it is safer to regard 

 the etymology of the word, as applied to this and 

 other insects such as the May-bug, &c., as at pre- 

 sent unknown. In Shakespeare the word occurs several 

 times, in the sense of a si)ectre, but never as the name of 

 the parasite, which, indeed, does not appear to be menticmed 

 by that observant author, a tolerably good indication that 

 it was not very common in his time. Southall, indeed, 

 maintains that when he wrote, bugs had been established 



in England only for about sixty years, which would throw 

 their first appearance down to the year 1670 ; but tlris idea 

 is plainly refuted by the notes of time already mentioned. 



To English entomologists the bed-bug is now known as 

 Aciinthia lectularia ; it is the insect which Linne caUed 

 Ciiiuw lectularius, a name by which it is still frequently 

 spoken of. Cime.e was the name by w-hich it waskno^vn to 

 the Romans, and hence was selected by Linne as the 

 generic term for bugs in general ; the specific name lectu- 

 larius is derived from the Latin word for a couch or bed, 

 and of course refers to the locality in which we most 

 frequently meet with it. 



Though annoying us in the same way as the flea, the 

 bed-bug" is yet a totally difl'erent sort of insect, and in its 

 life history departs as widely as possible from its companion 

 bedroom pest. The flea, it will be remembered, we re- 

 garded as a sort of wingless fly, and therefore located it in 

 the order Diptera ; the bug, on the other hand, belongs to 

 the order Hemiptera, and finds some of its nearest allies 

 in the plant bugs, water scorpions, water boatmen, skaters, 

 &c. The most fundamental distinction between these 

 two orders lies in the nature of the metamorphosis. The 

 Diptera, or Flies, as we have akeady shown, pass through 

 the usual changes in the course of their development, 

 appearing first as a grub or maggot, next as a UiTibless, 

 motionless chrysalis, and then as the perfect fly ; but the 

 Hemiptera or Bugs, pass through no such remakable altera- 

 tions of form, and in their early life show a general resem- 

 blance to what they will ultnnately become, diSering fi'om 



the adult chiefly in 

 size, and depth of 

 coloration, and in the 

 absence of wings and 

 the immature condi- 

 tion of the reproduc- 

 tive organs. Thus, 

 W'hile the young flea, 

 when hatched from 

 the egg, is a wrig- 

 gling, worm - like 

 creature, without limbs, and utterly unhke its parents, the 

 young and newly hatched bug is a six-legged running 

 creature, to all intents and purposes a miniature repro- 

 duction of its parents, and a forecast of what it will itself 

 in a few weeks become. Hence fleas and bugs, though 

 aUke in blood-sucking habits, and human parasitism, are 

 yet almost at opposite poles in the series of developmental 

 types. 



In the form of the body, again, there is the strongest 

 possible contrast between these two parasites. Both are 

 extremely narrow in one direction, and broad in another ; 

 but in the flea, the body is extended vertically and con- 

 tracted laterally, and in the bug it is extended laterally and 

 contracted vertically ; the former is nimpressed. the lattei 

 i/cprcssed. Fig. 1, representing diagraunnatically a 

 vertical transverse section of the two insects, strikingly 

 shows this difterenee. The extremely depressed and flat- 

 tened form which the bed-bug exhibits is by no means 

 exceptional in the order Hemiptera, in fact this order 

 contains amongst its species by far the flattest of all 

 insects ; " B flat " is a sobriquet not more applicable to 

 the bed-bug than to several other kinds that are not para- 

 sitic at all. Such flatness is always associated with the 

 habit of hiding in cracks and crevices — a habit in which, 

 everyone knows, our bedroom pest is a perfect adept. In 

 flatness, however, it does not equal a certain wild British 

 species which hves under the bark of willow-trees, and has 

 a body of almost paper-like thinness. 



The disgusting odour which attends the bed-bug would 



Fig. 1. — Diagrammatic Section of Bh 

 ov (a) Fi.ea, and (b) Bed-Bug. 



