The adult has eclectic tastes; it hunts the most varied prey. The larva might well do likewise. I offer Midges. They are absolutely refused. In the garret whence my flock originated, what could they have found that was easily obtained, without scuffling, so dangerous at that tender age? They would have found tallow, bones, hides, and nothing else. Let us give them tallow.
This time all goes well. My little creatures [[238]]settle down on the fatty substance, driving their suckers into it, drinking deeply of the stinking olein, and then retire to digest their meal in the sand, wherever they please. They thrive. I see them growing from day to day. In a fortnight they are plump, and, what is more, disguised beyond recognition. Their whole bodies, including the legs, are encrusted with sand.
This mineral bark began to form directly after the moult. The little creatures became speckled with earthy particles, thinly scattered at random. At present the envelope is continuous. Let matters take their course, and this wrap will become a sordid overall. Then the larva will really deserve the epithets which Linnæus bestows upon it: horrida, personata, the horrible insect that dons a mask and wears a dusty domino.
Should it occur to us to regard this tatter-demalion costume as an intentional piece of work, a ruse de guerre, a means of dissimulation whereby to approach its prey, we may undeceive ourselves: the Reduvius does not industriously make itself an overcoat; nor does it wear one with the object of concealing [[239]]itself. It all happens of itself, without any sort of art, like the mechanism whose secret was revealed to us by the lid of the egg, worn as a buckler. The insect exudes a certain unctuous humour, derived perhaps from the tallow on which it feeds. To this varnish, the dust through which it passes adheres without any further trouble on the insect’s part. The Reduvius does not dress itself; it dirties itself; it turns into a pellet of dust, a walking bit of filth, because it emits a sticky sweat.
One word more as to its diet. Linnæus, obtaining his information I know not where, makes the Reduvius our auxiliary against the Bed-bug. Since then, the books, monotonously echoing one another, have repeated the eulogy; it is accepted as a tradition that the Masked Reduvius makes war upon our nocturnal bloodsucker. This would certainly constitute a magnificent claim on our gratitude. But is it really the truth? I take the liberty of rebelling against tradition. That the Reduvius is sometimes found slaying Bed-bugs is very likely: my own captives were satisfied with Forest-bugs. They accepted them, however, without clamouring [[240]]for them; and they readily dispensed with them, seeming to prefer Locusts or any other insects.
Let us not then hasten to generalize and to look upon the Reduvius as a licensed consumer of the stinking pest of our beds. I see an important objection to this special vocation. Comparatively large in size, the Reduvius could not slip into the narrow chinks that shelter the Bed-bug. A fortiori, to track the Bed-bug to its lair is impracticable for the larva, hampered by its overcoat of dust, unless it invade our beds at the time when the other is running over us and selecting its morsel. Nothing justifies our presuming this intimacy with the sleeper; no one, that I know of, has surprised the Reduvius or its larva in the act of investigating our beds.
The masked larva does not deserve to be extolled for a few accidental captures. Its diet is quite different from what Linnæus tells us and the compilers keep on repeating. In its infancy it feeds on fatty matters, as my rearing-experiments prove. When it grows big it varies its victuals with insects, of no matter what order, as does the adult. [[241]]For it a butcher’s garret is an abode of bliss, where it finds a supply of fats, and, later, Flesh-flies, Dermestes, and other insects that batten on dead things. In the dark and ill-swept corners of our houses it gleans the particles of fat that fall from our kitchen-table; it catches unawares the drowsy Fly, the small, homeless Spider. This is enough to ensure its welfare.
Here is one more tradition to be deleted from our books, without much injury, however, to the insect’s reputation. If the Masked Bug ceases to appear in history as the executioner of the Bed-bug, it will henceforth cut a more respectable figure as the inventor of the box that is opened by the explosion of a bomb. [[242]]
[1] For the Bluebottle cf. The Life of the Fly: chaps. xiv to xvi.—Translator’s Note. [↑]