154 W. S. Patton : Cimex rotundatus, Signoret. [VOL. II, 



London, and at once found the local bug was not the same. About 

 that time I sent some specimens to Mr. Distant, who kindlj^ informed 

 me they were macrocephalus , Fieber. In order, therefore, to find 

 out whether lectularius did really occur in India, I obtained , through 

 the civil and medical authorities, a very large collection of bugs 

 from all parts of India, Burma, Assam, and the Malay Archipelago. 

 As a result of the examination of these specimens it was found 

 the Indian bed-bug was macrocephalus, and that lectularius, as far 

 as I was able to ascertain, is limited to the North- West Frontier 

 Province and the Kurram Valley. In the recent En2,lish edition 

 of Braun's work, macrocephalus is not mentioned, but ro'undatus^ 

 the bed-bug of the Island of Reunion, is described as a variety of 

 lectularius. On reading Signoret's ' description of rotundatus, I was 

 struck with some important differences between it and lectularius ; 

 ' in fact Signoret gave an exact description of macrocephalus. Dr. 

 Barbeau, Director of the Medical and Health Departments of the 

 Island of Mauritius, to whom I applied for bed-bugs, kindly sent 

 me a valuable collection from the Island, and through his French 

 colleagues obtained many hundreds from Reunion. I was thus 

 able to settle with certainty that the bed-bug of Mauritius and 

 Reunion is identical with macrocephalus of Fieber; and as Signoret 

 described it before Fieber, I have adopted the name Cimex rotunda- 

 tus for the Indian bed-bug. Continuing my investigations of the 

 two species lectularius and rotundatus, I have found thit the 

 "former is distributed chiefly throughout the temperate zones while 

 the latter is a tropical or subtropical species. I have recently had 

 rotundatus sent to me from the West Indies where, as in the case 

 of Mauritius, it was most probably introduced by Indian coolies; 

 it also occurs in the Congo (specimens kindl^^ sent me by Dr. C. 

 Wellmann) and Sierra lycone. 



As is well known, the family Cimicida;, which contains four 

 genera — Cimex, (Eciactis, Cocadumus , and Hematosiphon — belongs to 

 the Heteroptera, a sub-order of the Rhynchota, and comes between the 

 two families Phymatidce- and CeratocomhidcE. The genus Cimex con- 

 tains four species — Cimex lectularitis , l^inneeus ; Cimex rotundatus^ 

 Signoret; Cimex columbarius , ] envns ; and Ciniex pipistrelli, J enyns. 

 AH the species have the following characters : They are fiat, reddish- 

 brown insects, with a short, broad head containing two large ej^es 

 but no ocelli. The thorax, or more correctly the prothorax, is 

 semilunar in shape, with its anterior angles extended ; the elytra or 

 wing pads are rudimentary, and lie over the metathorax. The 

 abdomen consists of seven segments and an eighth or anal appendage ; 

 the legs are slender, the anterior tibiae more than three times as 

 long as the tarsi, which are three-jointed. The proboscis is flexed 

 in a groove beneath the head and prothorax. 



Cimex rotundatus, Signoret (plate xiii, figs, i and 2), is of a dark 

 mahogany colour, and differs from the type species lectularius, 



I Signoret, V., " Notice sur c|uelq. Hemipt. iiouv.," Annales Soc. EiUomol. 

 Fynncc, 1852, x, p. 539. 



