ORDER RHYNCHOTA (HEMIPTERA): BUGS 205 



has no trace of elytra, and the angles of the pronotum are 

 not produced. 



A mass of tradition and an extensive literature have 

 accumulated round the common bed-bug. It is commonly 

 supposed to live for a year or more in unoccupied houses, 

 some think without any food at all, though others suppose 

 that it may get a chance meal off a mouse, or even off 

 some dead animal. Recent experiments, by A. A. Girault, 

 confirm the ancient tradition of the bug's vitality and 

 endurance, and show that a bug can live at least 259 days 

 (in cold weather) without food. The same writer observed 

 that both larvae and adults will feed off a mouse living or 

 a mouse dead. 



The bed-bug has been accused of carrying the infection 

 of tubercle, leprosy, anthrax, plague, relapsing fever, and 

 typhus fever ; the assumption is likely enough, but actual 

 proofs are still wanting. 



Girault's observations show that a bed-bug starting in 

 a state of repletion, and afterwards fed periodically, laid 

 III eggs during a term of sixty-three days, and died 

 eighteen days after depositing the last egg ; and that 

 another replete bug, not afterwards fed, laid only 7 eggs 

 in a term of ten days, and died fifteen days afterwards. 



The same observer, following the career of an individual 

 larva, found that it fed immediately after hatching, and then 

 fed again three times before moulting on the thirteenth 

 day ; thereafter it moulted four times, at successive intervals 

 of nine, thirteen, four, and nine days, filling itself to repletion 

 once between each moult, and became adult on the forty- 

 eighth day of its life. He also states that certain 

 imprisoned larvae kept without food lived, some thirty- 

 nine days, others sixty-five days. The rate of develop- 

 ment, both embryonic and post-embryonic, is profoundly 

 affected by temperature, being as usual retarded by cold. 



Extermination of Bugs. — It must be remembered that any 

 number of bugs may pack themselves away in inaccessible 

 places — behind wainscoting, between floor-boards, in cracks 

 in walls, etc. It must also be remembered that bugs and 

 larvae may be killed by treatment which does not affect the 

 more resistant eggs. A badly infested room may first be 



