206 Bugs, Cicadas, Aphids, and Scale-insects 



hatch in about a week and the young become full grown in about three months 

 moulting five times during growth, but active and capable of "finding" for 

 themselves from birth. In the northern states there is but one generation 

 a year. The disagreeable bedbuggy odor is produced by a secretion of 

 small glands opening, in the adult, on the under side of the body. Another 

 species of Acanthia attacks chickens, pigeons, swallows, and bats, and 

 Lugger found this species, A hirundinis, or another similar one, attacking 

 in daytime the pupils in a school in western Minnesota. The best remedy 

 is the free application with a quill-feather of a saturated solution of corrosive 

 sublimate (Poison!) in alcohol to all cracks and crevices in infested bed- 

 steads, walls, floors, and ceilings. When bedbugs cannot be found hiding 

 in bedsteads in daytime and yet mysteriously appear every night, it is often 

 because they drop from the ceiling. 



FIG. 285 



FIG. 286. 



FIG. 285. The bedbug, Acanthia lectularia; young at left and adult at right. (After 



Riley; natural size indicated by line.) 

 FIG. 286. A predaceous leaf-bug, Lyctocoris fitchii. (After Lugger, natural size 



indicated by line.) 



In this family belong several small inconspicuous insects called flower- 

 bugs, which do much good by their persistent preying on noxious insects. 

 The best-known species is the insidious flower-bug, Triphleps insidiosus, 

 which preys on the chinch-bug. Another species is Lyctocoris fitchii 

 (Fig. 286), which preys on the larvae of certain destructive wood-boring 

 beetles. 



The remaining families, eleven, of American bugs find their food and 

 drink, for the most part, in the juices of living plants. Like the blood- 

 sucking bugs, they need for their feeding, and have, a well-developed suck- 

 ing-beak. From the tip of the sheath (labium) can be thrust out the foui 



