188 SCHOOL ENTOMOLOGY 



dinarily about a month is required. Often when a house 

 in which a cat or dog has been kept is closed up for the sum- 

 mer, the fleas will multiply rapidly and the house will be 

 found alive with them when opened. 



Where cats or dogs are kept they should be provided 

 with a rug on which to sleep and this should be given a fre- 

 quent shaking and brushing. Dusting the hair of a dog or 

 cat copiously with pyrethrum powder over a paper will cause 

 many of the fleas to fall off partly stupefied and they may 

 be destroyed. The best means to rid these animals of fleas 

 is to dip them in a tepid bath containing creolin or carbolic 

 solution. Where houses become infested they should be 

 thoroughly cleaned and gasoline or benzine should be in- 

 jected into the floor cracks. Badly infested houses may be 

 rid of fleas by fumigating with hydrocyanic acid gas (see 

 page 336). 



116. Bedbugs. Probably no other insect is so thoroughly 

 detested as the bedbug * (32) by the good housewife, who 

 ofttimes considers herself disgraced by its mere presence. 

 Such a feeling is hardly warranted, for they are often intro- 

 duced by servants or are brought in after traveling, but 

 failure to get rid of them as soon as possible certainly is dis- 

 graceful. The full-grown adult is about one-fourth of an 

 inch long by half as wide, of an oval shape, reddish-brown in 

 color, wingless, and has a very characteristic, disagreeable 

 odor. Bedbugs are mostly nocturnal in their habits, and 

 after feeding upon the sleeping individual will again conceal 

 themselves in crevices. Partial relief from them may some- 

 times be secured by keeping a light burning. The small 

 whitish eggs are laid in masses in the hiding places and from 

 them the small whitish young emerge in a week or two. The 

 length of time for the development of the adult depends 

 * Cimex lectidarius Linn. Family Acanthiidce, see page 60. 



