THE ENTOMOLOGIST'S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 214.] SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1860. [Price Id, 
THE BED-BUG. 
We owe many apologies to this insect 
for the slight we have inadvertently 
put upon it. It appears that it was 
not omitted intentionally from Mr. 
Walker’s List of British Hemiptera ; 
indeed, we believe grave reasons might 
be urged in support of the statement 
that it was not omitted at all, inten- 
tionally or otherwise. 
The facts would appear to have 
been thus: the name was inadvertently 
misprinted Uetularia instead of Lectu- 
laria, and as we do not generally 
select birch-twigs for our bed-fellows, 
the last thing that would have occurred 
to us would have been to translate 
“ Acanlhia bet ularia,” into the bed- 
bug-, secondly, the reference given to 
Curtis proved an iusect so totally 
different from any bed-frequenting ani- 
mal that there was no possibility of 
the reference correcting the misprint 
in the name. 
How this curious tissue of mistakes 
arose is a mystery; but sometimes it 
is found that persons have an anti- 
pathy to certain animals, and cannot 
see them or hear them mentioned 
without a shudder: were you to show 
to such an individual a figure of 
the dreaded object he would instinc- 
tively turn over the page ; this appears 
to have been what Mr. Walker did 
when he referred to the volume of 
Curtis. 
Mr. Walker has announced in our 
columns the errors he • has hitherto 
been able to detect in this List of 
Hemiptera, and we trust he will con- 
tinue to do so. It is best to be keenly 
alive to our own faults, and then we 
get less castigation from others. 
The British Bugs — the true He- 
miptera — number nearly 260; of these 
upwards of 230 are terrestrial and the 
remainder are aquatic, the proportions 
being nearly as ten to one. The 
water-bugs, though so few in number, 
are very diverse in their habits. 
A few species are super-aquatic, 
running like spiders on the surface of 
the water ; others are actual swimmers, 
plunging even to the bottom of ponds 
and streams; these are subdivided into 
two principal groups — those with rap- 
torial feet, such as the water-scorpion 
(Nepa cinerea ), and those with rowing 
