THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BEDBUG 
ILLUSTRATED FROM LIFE. 
Part I. 
Perhaps no insecthas a wider acquaint¬ 
ance than the bedbug. It is a cosmopoli¬ 
tan insect, and almost every one has 
heard about it. Yet in spite of all this, 
a few questions will soon develop the 
fact that most people have very vague 
ideas regarding these much-abused and 
detested insects ; and I suspect, further¬ 
more, that one would be surprised to 
find so many persons who really never 
saw or smelled the genuine article—a 
live bedbug, And how few of us ever 
had any definite ideas as to the story of 
a bedbug’s life, how it grows, multiplies, 
etc. ! 
When it was suggested, a few weeks 
ago, that I prepare an illustrated biog¬ 
raphy of a bedbug, I was at a loss to 
know what to do, for I had neveryet had 
the pleasure of his majesty’s intimate ac¬ 
quaintance, except to attend one or two 
post-mortem examinations of some muti¬ 
lated and pickled (in alcohol) corpses. I 
felt that 1 must meet the creature so as 
to write from experience ; and, of course, 
no biography would be complete unless 
illustrated by a lifelike likeness of the 
subject. For days, and nights, too, for 
that matter, the question uppermost in 
my mind was, Where, when, and under 
what conditions are we to meet ? Fate 
was kind (?), however, for during a recent 
trip about the State, I received a mid¬ 
night call from about 25 members of one 
bedbug family. The result was, much 
blood lost, many of the enemy slain, 
actual experience to write from, and one 
adult member of the family had to under¬ 
go the, probably, unique experience of 
being the first bedbug tosit for his 
photograph. In his last will and testa¬ 
ment, this bedbug bequeathed to each 
reader of this biography, a copy of this 
lifelike likeness as shown in the center 
of Fig. 239. 
The “native heath” or original home 
of the subject of this sketch, has never 
been ascertained ; it is, probably, south¬ 
eastern Europe, and the neighboring 
Asiatic and African countries. From 
the writings of the ancient Greeks, 
Aristophanes, Pliny, and Aristotle, it is 
evident that they were acquainted with 
the bedbug, which they called “Koris”; 
I have not yet seen any accounts of the 
discovery of “ mummy ” bedbugs to au¬ 
thenticate their Egyptian origin. The 
ancient Homans called the creatures 
“ Cimex”, and when Linnaeus scien¬ 
tifically christened the bedbug over 125 
years ago, he used the Roman word as a 
surname, giving us the name Cimex 
lectularia, the given name being derived 
from the Latin word for couch or bed, 
referring to the locality in which we 
most often meet the insect. The origin 
of the modern common name—“bed¬ 
bug”—is obscure ; previous to the Nine¬ 
teenth Century it seems to have been 
called in English, first “wall louse,” 
and then “ the bug”. In the quaint old 
volume, dated 1634, from which were 
taken the pictures of the Sixteenth 
Century bedbugs, shown in Fig. 239, 
there is evidence that the insect had be¬ 
gun work in England as early as 1503 ; 
it, doubtless, reached America soon after 
extensive settlements were made. 
What is a bedbug, and whom does it 
number among its near relatives ? Its 
six legs tell us that it is an insect. 
Other peculiarities in its makeup and 
life history cause it to be classed among 
the true bugs, most of which live upon 
liquid food alone; their mouth parts be¬ 
ing especially adapted for sucking, in¬ 
stead of biting, as do the beetles and 
caterpillars. Some of its nearest rela¬ 
tives in the insect world, are the well- 
known Chinch-bug, and the Squash bug. 
The trite and vulgar saying : “ The bed¬ 
bug has no wings at all, but gets there 
just the same,” is not quite strictly true 
as regards the wings, for on each side of 
the body, just above the base of the 
second pair of legs, one can see, in 
Fig. 239, a rudimentary or greatly abbre¬ 
viated front wing; there are no traces of 
the hind wings left. Fortunately for 
our comfort and peace of mind, these 
wings are quite useless for flight. It is 
a curious fact, however, that there are 
some species of these true bugs which, 
usually, have these imperfectly devel¬ 
oped wings like the bedbug, but which, 
occasionally yield individual specimens 
with fully developed wings. Now, as 
the bedbug is one of these unfinished 
forms, the question arises whether it 
ever has, or whether it ever will assume 
the fully winged condition. Imagine a 
flying bedbug ! “ That such a disgust¬ 
ing insect should add to its resources 
the power of flight, whereby it might 
become increasingly annoying by set¬ 
tling on the bodies of respectable citizens 
as they walk the streets, and by regard¬ 
ing every open window as an invitation 
to enter, would immensely increase the 
loathing with which it is now regarded 
in respectable society, and it is a com¬ 
fort to know that no record exists of 
flying bedbugs having ever been met 
in this country. There have been re¬ 
ports that such specimens have been 
seen somewhere in the eastern countries, 
but there appears to be no authentic 
record of any such occurrence; still such 
a thing is a possibility, though a most 
remote one.” 
They have, undoubtedly, descended 
from prehistoric ancestors which could 
fly. Having at some period in the re¬ 
mote past, chosen to attach itself to the 
most migratory animal in the world, 
and thereby gaining all the advantage 
of man’s artificial as well as natural 
means of locomotion, it would seem that 
a winged form is not now a matter of 
such prime importance to it as to wild 
species that do not possess these extra 
advantages. Therefore, the mere fact of 
the insect having chosen this parasitic 
life, probably militates against its ever 
again occurring as a flying animal. 
There is but little, externally, to dis¬ 
tinguish the fathers from the mothers 
among the bedbugs; the former are, 
usually, smaller and narrower. All, 
both young and old, have a peculiar 
odor, which has brought into use the 
word “bedbuggy” as descriptive of a 
certain class of odors ; dead bedbugs 
have no odor. This odor is produced by 
the continued secretion of a volatile, 
colorless, oily fluid from glands situated 
under a little flap of skin on the under¬ 
side of the body between the points of 
attachment on the second and third 
pairs of legs; in the baby bugs, these 
glands are said to open on the back of 
the thorax. The odor is of a compound 
nature, and it is said that a keen-scented 
person will detect, underlying the more 
disagreeable elements, the scent of a 
freshly-cut cucumber. The disagree¬ 
ableness of the odor is not due to any 
peculiarities in a bedbug’s nightly menu, 
for many of the true bugs (the “ stink- 
bugs”), that are pure vegetarians, ex¬ 
hale a precisely similar odor. Usually, 
this odor has a protecting function, but 
it would seem that the bedbug derives 
but little protection therefrom, for, 
apart from its presence being thus plainly 
advertised to man, its other enemies, as 
we shall see later, are not deterred from 
devouring it. 
The obscure habits of bedbugs caused 
their true origin to remain, for a long 
time, unknown. Luring the first 2,000 
years of the recorded history of this in¬ 
sect, their presence was accounted for 
by a recourse to that common refuge of 
ignorance, the doctrine of spontaneous 
generation. In Aristotle’s time, it was 
believed that bugs originated from the 
sweat of animals, and the artist of the 
Sixteenth Century bedbugs shown in Fig. 
239 (date, 1634), strongly asserted that 
the creatures arose from juices which 
exude from wood, and from putrefying 
moisture around beds. He also mentions 
a current popular belief that new bugs 
arise, hydra-like, from the crushed re¬ 
mains of other bugs ; thus, when one 
was crushed, two were created ! Scien¬ 
tists laugh at these ideas to-day, yet 
there are many who have no more cor¬ 
rect ideas of a bedbug’s life-story than 
did the ancients, m. v. slingerland. 
BY THE WAY. 
I T may be a source of comfort to some 
mothers, who have daily to listen to 
remarks derogatory to the home cuisine, 
and hear comparisons drawn between 
their cooking and “liis” mother’s, that, 
some day, they will have their innings, 
when their sons tell their wives, “ Noth¬ 
ing ever tasted half as good as the pie my 
mother made.” Or, if you have not the 
chance to get even that way, be sure 
that your cuisine is good enough for any 
one, then, like Samantha Allen, you can 
rise to the occasion and calmly tell 
Josiah, when he hints that mebby the 
Widder Bump’s nut cakes are a leetle 
mite better than hers, that, if the 
Widder Bump can make better nut cakes 
than she can, which, give her plenty of 
sour cream and eggs and other ingred¬ 
ients, she don’t believe for a minute 
she can, she should be glad to see them. 
At any rate, running down other folks’s 
nut cakes, won’t make hers any better 
or worse. 
A certain clergyman in Hartford, 
Conn., was continually saying, “ Why is 
it nothing tastes as it used to do ? I 
would give anything to have a certain 
steamed pudding my mother used to 
make. I never tired of it.” This clergy¬ 
man, fortunately, had a sensible wife 
who was not at all jealous of her mother- 
in-law’s accomplishments ; on the con¬ 
trary, she encouraged her lord and mas¬ 
ter to talk about them, and always 
ended the discussion by saying, “ When 
your mother comes to visit us, we will 
ask her to make one.” Of course, she 
knew in her heart that her husband 
brought a healthy boy’s appetite to his 
mother’s table, and what seemed delic¬ 
ious then, might not be at all the same 
to him now. But she bided her time. 
The mother-in-law came and was de¬ 
lighted to be asked to make one of those 
long-desired puddings. The minister’s 
wife could hardly keep from smiling 
when she heard of what it was made. 
But, as she remembered that large 
family of hungry boys and girls, and not 
so very much money to provide 365 din¬ 
ners, she did not wonder that she had to 
“ rack her brains” for something to fill 
“ the aching void.” 
This was the pudding : Remove all 
the crust from a square loaf of bread, 
stick as many raisins in as possible, 
steam three hours, and eat with a sauce 
of molasses and butter melted together. 
“ My dear,” said the minister, as the 
dessert was placed upon the table, 
“ What is this ? ” 
“Why, don’t you know?” said his 
mother. “ You ought to, I am sure, 
chimed in his wife. “ Hardly a day 
passes that he does not wish that he 
could have one of your puddings.” And 
then it looked so funny, and tasted more 
so, and they looked at each other and 
burst into a hearty laugh. It is safe to 
say that no further reference was made 
to that particular pudding his mother 
used to make. sarah isuam coit. 
WASHING BLANKETS. 
W HEN we remember how many 
blankets are made harsh and 
disagreeable by washing, we do not 
wonder that housekeepers are not will¬ 
ing to consign them to the washtub as 
long as they look clean. Still it is a 
fact that they should be washed fre¬ 
quently, whether they seem badly soiled 
or not; for one will often be surprised 
at the amount of dirt an apparently 
clean blanket will contain. Excellent 
results may be obtained with very little 
labor, by observing the following direc¬ 
tions, and your blankets will be soft and 
fleecy as long as they last. 
Select a bright sunshiny day for this 
work, so that they will dry quickly 
and without streaks, and if a gentle 
breeze be blowing, so much the better. 
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When Jenny Lind Sang 
In Castle Garden 
The scenes of unparalleled enthusiasm 
*when people went almost music-mad, 
the wonderful audience of thousands , 
the hundreds listening in row-boats: 
all are graphically described in the 
November Ladies' Home Journal 
by a famous eye-witness . 
The great scenes shown 
in pictures made by De 
Thulstrup. The first 
of a series of “Great 
Personal Events." 
One Dollar for One Year 
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA 
