"Lord! yes, I am often sent for to catch a single bug. I've had to go many, many miles — even 100 or 200 — into the country, and perhaps only catch half a dozen bugs after all; but then that's all that are there, so it answers our employer's purpose as well as if they were swarming.
"I work for the upper classes only; that is, for carriage-company and such like approaching it, you know. I have noblemen's names, the first in England, on my books.
"My work is more method; and I may call it a scientific treating of the bugs rather than wholesale murder. We don't care about the thousands, it's the last bug we look for, whilst your carpenters and upholsterers leave as many behind them, perhaps, as they manage to catch.
"The bite of the bug is very curious. They bite all persons the same; but the difference of effect lies in the constitutions of the parties. I've never noticed that a different kind of skin makes any difference in being bitten. Whether the skin is moist or dry, it don't matter. Wherever bugs are, the person sleeping in the bed is sure to be fed on, whether they are marked or not; and as a proof, when nobody has slept in the bed for some time, the bugs become quite flat; and, on the contrary, when the bed is always occupied, they are round as a lady-bird.
"The flat bug is more ravenous, though even he will allow you time to go to sleep before he begins with you; or at least till he thinks you ought to be asleep. When they find all quiet, not even a light in the room will prevent their biting; but they are seldom or never found under the bedclothes. They like a clear ground to get off, and generally bite round the edges of the nightcap or the nightdress. When they are found in the bed, it's because the parties have been tossing about, and have curled the sheets round the bugs.
"The finest and fattest bugs I ever saw were those I found in a black man's bed. He was the favorite servant of an Indian general. He didn't want his bed done by me he didn't want it touched. His bed was full of 'em, no beehive was ever fuller. The walls and all were the same, there wasn't a patch that was not crammed with them. He must have taken them all over the house wherever he went.
"I've known persons to be laid up for months through bug-bites. There was a very handsome fair young lady I knew once, and she was much bitten about the arms, and neck, and face, so that her eyes were so swelled up she couldn't see. The spots rose up like blisters, the same as if stung with a nettle, only on a very large scale. The bites were very much inflamed, and after a time they had the appearance of boils.
"Some people fancy, and it is historically recorded, that the bug smells because it has no vent; but this is fabulous, for they have a vent. It is not the human blood neither that makes them smell, because a young bug who has never touched a drop will smell. They breathe, I believe, through their sides; but I can't answer for that, though it's not through the head. They haven't got a mouth, but they insert into the skin the point of a tube, which is quite as fine as a hair, through which they draw up the blood. I have many a time put a bug on the back of my hand, to see how they bite; though I never felt the bite but once, and then I suppose the bug had pitched upon a very tender part, for it was a sharp prick, something like that of a leech-bite.
"I once had a case of lice-killing, for my process will answer as well for them as for bugs, though it's a thing I never should follow by choice. Lice seem to harbor pretty much the same as bugs do. I find them in the furniture. It was a nurse that brought them into the house, though she was as nice and clean a looking woman as ever I saw. I should almost imagine the lice must have been in her, for they say there is a disease of that kind; and if the tics breed in sheep, why should not lice breed in us? for we're but live matter, too. I didn't like myself at all for two or three days after that lice-killing job, I can assure you; it's the only case of the kind I ever had, and I can promise you it shall be the last.
"I was once at work on the Princess Charlotte's own bedstead. I was in the room, and she asked me if I had found anything, and I told her no; but just at that minute I did happen to catch one, and upon that she sprang up on the bed, and put her head on my shoulder, to look at it. She had been tormented by the creature, because I was ordered to come directly, and that was the only one I found. When the Princess saw it, she said, 'Oh, the nasty thing! That's what tormented me last night; don't let him escape.' I think he looked all the better for having tasted royal blood.
"I also profess to kill beetles, though you never can destroy them so effectually as you can bugs; for, you see, beetles run from one house to another, and you can never perfectly get rid of them; you can only keep them under. Beetles will scrape their way and make their road round a fire-place, but how they go from one house to another I can't say, but they do.
"I never had patience enough to try and kill Fleas by my process; it would be too much of a chivey to please me.
"I never heard of any but one man who seriously went to work selling bug-poison in the streets. I was told by some persons that he was selling a first-rate thing, and I spent several days to find him out. But, after all, his secret proved to be nothing at all. It was train-oil, linseed and hempseed, crushed up all together, and the bugs were to eat it till they burst.
"After all, secrets for bug-poisons ain't worth much, for all depends upon the application of them. For instance, it is often the case that I am sent for to find out one bug in a room large enough for a school. I've discovered it when the creature had been three or four months there, as I could tell by his having changed his jacket so often, for bugs shed their skins, you know. No, there was no reason that he should have bred; it might have been a single gentleman or an old maid.
"A married couple of bugs will lay from forty to fifty eggs at one laying. The eggs are oval, and are each as large as the thirty-second part of an inch; and when together are in the shape of a caraway comfit, and of a bluish-white color. They'll lay this quantity of eggs three times in a season. The young ones are hatched direct from the egg, and, like young partridges, will often carry the broken eggs about with them, clinging to their back. They get their fore-quarters out, and then they run about before the other legs are completely cleared.
"As soon as the bugs are born they are of a cream color, and will take to blood directly; indeed, if they don't get it in two or three days, they die; but after one feed they will live a considerable time without a second meal. I have known old bugs to be frozen over in a horse-pond — when the furniture had been thrown in the water — and there they have remained for a good three weeks; still, after they have got a little bit warm in the sun's rays, they have returned to life again.
"I myself kept bugs for five years and a half without food, and a housekeeper at Lord H's informed me that an old bedstead that I was then moving from a storeroom was taken down forty-five years ago, and had not been used since, but the bugs in it were still numerous, though as thin as living skeletons. They couldn't have lived upon the sap of the wood, it being worm-eaten and dry as a bone. A bug will live for a number of years, and we find that when bugs are put away in old furniture without food, they don't increase in number; so that, according to my belief, the bugs I just mentioned must have existed forty-five years: besides, they were large ones, and very dark colored, which is another proof of age.
"It is a dangerous thing for bugs when they are shedding their skins, which they do about four times in the course of a year; when they throw off their hard shell and have a soft coat, so that the least touch will kill them; whereas at other times they will take a strong pressure. I have plenty of bug-skins, which I keep by me as curiosities, of all sizes and colors, and sometimes I have found the young bugs collected inside the old ones' skins for warmth, as if they had put on their father's great-coat. There are white bugs albinoes you may call 'em — freaks of nature like."
Notonectidae — Water-boatmen.
Humboldt mentions that he saw insects' eggs sold in the markets of Mexico, which were collected on the surface of lakes. Under the name of Axayacat, these eggs, or those of some other species of fly, deposited on rush mats, are sold as a caviare in Mexico. Rev. Thomas Smith, who makes the same statement, also says the Mexicans likewise eat the flies themselves, ground and made up with saltpetre. Something similar to these eggs, found in the pools of the desert of Fezzan, serves the Arabs for food, having the taste of caviare.
In the Bulletin de la Societe Imperiale Zoologique d'Acclimation, M. Guerin Meneville has published a paper on a sort of bread which the Mexicans make of the eggs of three species of heteropterous insects.
According to M. Craveri, by whom some of the Mexican bread, and of the insects yielding it, were brought to Europe, these insects and their eggs are very common in the fresh waters of the lagunes of Mexico. The natives cultivate, in the lagune of Chalco, a sort of carex called toute, on which the insects readily deposit their eggs. Numerous bundles of these plants are made, which are taken to a lagune, the Texcuco, where they float in great numbers in the water. The insects soon come and deposit their eggs on the plants, and in about a month the bundles are removed from the water, dried, and then beaten over a large cloth to separate the myriad of eggs with which the insects have covered them. These eggs are then cleaned and sifted, put into sacks like flour, and sold to the people for making a sort of cake or biscuit called "hautle," which forms a tolerably good food, but has a fishy taste, and is slightly acid. The bundles of carex are replaced in the lake, and afford a fresh supply of eggs, which process may be repeated for an indefinite number of times.