THE BEDBUG AND CONE-NOSE. 



35 



as a means of protection, in the conditions under which the bedbug 

 lives, are kept away from it, and the roach, which will be shown later 

 to feed on bedbugs, is evidently not deterred by the odor, while the com- 

 mon house ant, which will also attack the bedbug, seems not to find this 

 odor disagreeable. 



The bedbug is thoroughly nocturnal in habit and displays a certain 

 degree of wariness and caution, or intelligence, in its efforts at con- 

 cealment during the day. It thrives particularly in filthy apartments 

 and in old bouses which are full of cracks and crevices in which it can 

 conceal itself beyond easy reach. It usually leaves the bed at the 

 approach of daylight to go into concealment either in cracks in the 

 bedstead, if it be one of the old wooden variety, or behind wainscoting, 

 or under loose wall paper, where it manifests its gregarious habit by col- 

 lecting in masses together. The old-fashioned heavy wooden bedsteads 

 are especially fav(»rable for the concealment and multiplication of this 



Fig. 9. — Cimex lectularius: a, first larval skin shed at tirst moult; 6, second larval stage taken imme- 

 diately after emerging from a,- c, same after first meal, distended with blood (original). 



insect, and the general use in later years of iron and brass bedsteads 

 has very greatly facilitated its eradication. They are not apt to be 

 very active in winter, especially in cold rooms, and ordinarily hibernate 

 in their i^laces of concealment. 



The bedbug, though normally feeding on human blood, seems to be 

 able to subsist for a time at least on much simpler food, and in fact the 

 evidence is pretty conclusive that it is able to get more or less suste- 

 nance from the juices of moistened wood, or the moisture in the accu- 

 mulations of dust, etc., in crevices in tiooring. No other ex])lanation 

 would seem to account for the fact that houses long unoccupied are 

 found, on being reinhabitated, to be thoroughly stocked with bedbugs. 



There is a very prevalent belief among the old settlers in the West 

 that this insect normally lives on dead or diseased cottonwood logs, 

 and is almost certain to be abundant in log houses of this wood. This 

 belief was recently voiced by Capt. S. M. Swigert, V. S. A., who reports 

 that it often occurs in numbers under the bark of dead trees of cotton- 



