158 INSECTS AFFECTING DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
The eggs are oval in shape, of a whitish color, slightly narrowed at 
one end, and will be found in great numbers in the cracks which furnish 
shelter for the adults. The young bugs escape from the eggs by push- 
ing off a circular lid at one end. They are similar to the adults except 
in color and in the proportions of the body regions. At first nearly 
white, they gradually assume the reddish and finally the dark reddish 
brown color of the adults. The body is at first more slender and the 
head larger in proportion to the rest of the body, but gradually the 
abdomen widens until the insect acquires the shape and size pe 
in the figure. 
Professor Uhler says (Standard Natural History, Vol. II, p. 205): 
This species has been distributed over most parts of the world, chiefly by the 
agency of man, and, as might be expected under such circumstances, is subject to 
much variation in the relative size, 
proportions, and forms of most 
parts of the body. Full-favored 
gross specimens are often quite 
coarsely punctured and_ hairy, 
while their half-starved brethren 
have a much thinner outside integ- 
ument and finer punctures, with 
less conspicuous pubescence. Some 
specimens have the wing pads hang- 
ing loose as if ready to change into 
wing covers, but generally these 
are run together into one piece on 
the middle line. Thus far no indi- 
Fia. 88.— A canthialectularia: a, young ; b, adult—enlarged vyjidualsof this insect have been met 
(from Riley). with fully winged. 
There is some confusion as concerns the attacks of the bedbug or its 
parasitism on other animals than man. Packard (Guide to the Study 
of Insects, p. 551) states that “it lives as a parasite on the domestic 
birds, such as the dove,” and further, same book and page, that ‘ Mr. 
James MacDonald writes me that he has found a nest of swallows on a 
court-house in Iowa swarming with bugs.” In the American Ento- 
mologist (Vol. I, p. 87) the following statement occurs: 
Ordinarliy the bed-bug is confined to the dwelling places of man, and lives on the 
blood of us great lords of creation, but we have known it to swarm in prodigious” 
numbers in a chicken house, where it must have fed exclusively upon chickens’ 
blood, and it is said to occur also in European pigeon houses. 
As other species of the same genus have been described as infesting 
pigeons, swallows, and bats, respectively, it might be that these state- 
ments are based upon observations which did not take into considera- 
tion the specific distinctions. Still another source of confusion exists 
so far as birds are concerned, and that is the occurrence upon the swift 
(Chetura pelasgia), frequently called “swallow” or ‘chimney swallow,” 
a species of louse {Nitzschia pulicaria) which, though smaller, has so 
much of a resemblance to the bed-bug as to mislead an observer not 
familiar with the characters separating the divisions of insects to which 
these belong. 
