Everyone is familiar with the main facts of such a life-story as that of a moth or butterfly. The form of the adult bed bug (fig. 1 _a_) is dominated by the wings–two pairs of scaly wings, carried respectively on the middle and hindmost of the three segments that make up the _thorax_ or central region of the bed bug"s body. Each of these three segments carries a pair of legs. In front of the thorax is the head on which the pair of long jointed feelers and the pair of large, sub-globular, compound eyes are the most prominent features. Below the head, however, may be seen, now coiled up like a watch-spring, now stretched out to draw the nectar from some scented blossom, the butterfly"s sucking trunk or proboscis, situated between a pair of short hairy limbs or palps (fig. 2). These palps belong to the appendages of the hindmost segment of the head, appendages which in Bed Bugs are modified to form a hind-lip or _labium_, bounding the mouth cavity below or behind. The proboscis is made up of the pair of jaw-appendages in front of the labium, the _maxillae_, as they are called. Behind the thorax is situated the _abdomen,_ made up of nine or ten recognisable segments, none of which carry limbs comparable to the walking legs, or to the jaws which are the modified limbs of the head-segments. The whole cuticle or outer covering of the body, formed (as is usual in the group of animals to which Bed Bugs belong) of a horny (chitinous) secretion of the skin, is firm and hard, and densely covered with hairy or scaly outgrowths. Along the sides of the bed bug are a series of paired openings or spiracles, leading to a set of air-tubes which ramify throughout the body and carry oxygen directly to the tissues.