The Bed-bugs 91 



cubic feet of room space. The sulphur should be placed in a pan, 

 a well made in the top of the pile and a little alcohol poured in, to 

 facilitate burning. The whole should be placed in a larger pan 

 and surrounded by water so as to avoid all danger of fire. Windows 

 should be tightly closed, beds, closets and drawers opened, and 

 bedding spread out over chairs in order to expose them fully to the 

 fumes. As metal is tarnished by the sulphur fumes, ornaments, 

 clocks, instruments, and the like should be removed. When all is 

 ready the sulphur should be fired, the room tightly closed and left 

 for twelve to twenty-four hours. Still more efficient in large houses, 

 or where many hiding places favor the bugs, is fumigation with 

 hydrocyanic acid gas. This is a deadly poison and must be used 

 under rigid precautions. Through the courtesy of Professor Herrick, 

 who has had much experience with this method, we give in the Ap- 

 pendix, the clear and detailed directions taken from his bulletin on 

 "Household Insects." 



Fumigation with formaldehyde gas, either from the liquid or 

 "solid" formalin, so efficient in the case of contagious diseases, is 

 useless against bed-bugs and most other insects. 



Other Bed-bugs — Cimex hemipterus (= C. rotundatus) is a trop- 

 ical and subtropical species, occurring in both the old and new world. 

 Patton and Cragg state that it is distributed throughout India, 

 Burma, Assam, the Malay Peninsula^ Aden, the Island of Mauri- 

 tius, Reunion, St. Vincent and Porto Rico. "It is widely distribu- 

 ted in Africa, and is probably the common species associated there 

 with man." Brumpt also records it for Cuba, the Antilles, Brazil, 

 and Venezuela. 



This species, which is sometimes called the Indian bed-bug, 

 differs from C. lectularius in being darker and in having a more 

 elongate abdomen. The head also is shorter and narrower, and the 

 prothorax has rounded borders. 



It has the same habits and practically the same life cycle as 

 Cimex lectularius. Mackie, in India, has fotmd that it is capable 

 of transmitting the Asiatic type of recurrent fever. Roger suggested 

 that it was also capable of transmitting kala-azar and Patton has 

 described in detail the developmental stages of Leishmania, the 

 causative organism of Kala-azar, in the stomach of this bug, but 

 Brumpt declares that the forms described are those of a common, 

 non-pathogenic flagellate to be found in the bug, and have nothing 



