CHAPTER IV. 
HEMIPTERA. 
Bugs and Lice. 
SUBORDER HETEROPTERA. 
Insects with suctorial mouth parts; four wings, unless altogether 
wanting, the upper or front pair being thickened or leathery at the 
bases. The young resemble the adults except in size and in wanting 
wings. They live upon the juices of plants or animals, which they 
procure by suction. 
Family ACANTHIID ™®. 
(Bed Bug and Allied Forms.) 
THE COMMON BED Bu6gG. 
(Acanthia lectularia Linn.) 
This species, described by Linnzus a century and a half ago, has 
been a most familiar insect to man, though for how long a time it is 
quite difficult to determine. Westwood (Introduction, Vol. II, p. 475) 
Says: 
, 
[ts introduction into this country (England) has been a subject of discussion. It 
was well known to Pliny (Hist. N., 29, 17), Dioscorides, Aristophanes, and Aristotle 
(Hist. An. Ed. Bek., p. 148,12); but it has been generally asserted to have been 
brought from America to England, whence it passed to the Continent of Europe, and 
that it was not known here until 1670. Mouffet, however (Ins. Theatr., p. 270); 
mentions its having been seen in 15°3. It has, however, been noticed as a singular 
fact, and as showing that this disgusting visitant must have been comparatively 
little known in the days of ‘‘Good Queen Bess,” that, although the word ‘‘ bug” 
occurs five or six different times in Shakspeare’s plays, it is in every instance syn- 
onymous with bugbear, and does not designate this insect (Patterson’s Shakspeare 
Letters, p. 59). 
It is by no means easy to estimate the amount of injury caused by 
this insect, for so far as man is concerned it consists of loss of time and 
comfort, while its effects upon other animals are involved in too much 
obscurity to allow of any estimates being formed: 
As found in houses infesting man it can only be considered as semi- 
parasitic, living for the most part secreted in cracks and crevices and 
attacking its victims during the night. Probably its attacks upon 
other animals are of a similar nature, although it is referred to by some 
authors as a parasite of domestic fowls, = 
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