The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-03-08
KISSING BUG DESCRIBED.
SIX KINDS OF THEM KNOWN, TO SAY NOTHING or MOSQUITOES.

SAY NOTHING or 1EOS0 UITOES.
 An Official Declaration That There Wa
 Ground for the Scare of Inst summe
 Spider Bites Now Ascribed to Thes
 Insects-Thcir Attacks May Be Dan
 gerous.
 That creature which under the gene.
 ral game of kissing buzz afflicted thi
 nation with fear and semi-occasionally
 bit some one last summer has beer
 scientifically determined and is accu
 rately described under several heads ir
 the latest pamphlet issued by the Di.
 vision of Entomology of the Depart
 ment of Agriculture. Of such interest
 was the matter deemed that the United
 States Entomologist L. O. Howard
 himself undertook the investigation and
 his conclusion is that instead of being
 chimera of the popular imagination
 as eclestific men have generally been
 inclined to regard it, the kissing bug is
 is real and not only harmful but even dangerous under certain conditions. MT.
 Howard considers six distinct insects as
 coming under the general head of kiss
 ing bugs and believes that these in-
 sects are responsible for the reports of
 serious bites in 1899 and also that in
 past years they may have been the
 source of many reported spider bites of serious nature.
 The kissing bug craze, as Mr. Howard
 calls it, originated in the city of Wash ington in June 1899, and through the newspapers spread over almost the en- tire country resulting in "one of the most interesting cases of widespread popular alarm arising from compara- lively insignificant cause which has oc cured in the present scientific and mat ter-of-fact century" Throughout the country persons who were bitten by any form of irritant insect straightway rushed to the nearest newspaper office or to any scientific man of their ac- quaintance bearing with them whatever form of insect life that happened to be about at the time they suffered the bite, and confident that the captive was the only true and original kissing bug. Thus it happened that various innocent forms of hymenoptera, neuroptera, coneoptera, and even lepidoptera were haled to the authorities under the in- dictment of poisoning. Probably most of the bites were those of eXasperating but not really murderous mosquito. There was a case on Long Island of a young woman who was bitten upon the arm which swelled considerably, where at the victim sent for the nearest doc pr ir, Iirn a lar 10 cny, ina 1ha captured small white moth in her room and putting two and two together decided that she had been poisoned by a kissing bug and was about to die. It was only after the physician, who hap pened to know samething about ento- mology explained to his patient that a moth cannot possibly bite any one, hay ng nothing to bite with, and further more captured upon the ceiling of the | 'oom a large mosquito liberally dis | ended with blood, that the young wo- nan consented to postpone her last will md testament and become convalescent | This is only one case out of many, but n the majority of cases the bite could lot be brought home to the perpetrator 0 directly; hence the vast variety of insects that got bad name in that ummer
 Of all these MT Howard regards but hree Eastern species as having any ight to the authorship of the kissing Jug scare Both have been captured n the very act of biting human beings nd those same humans have subee- uently swelled up to varying extents o the indictment is considered as com Mr. rI hot 1,a l riginal cases of bite in the Emergency Hospital in Washington, which started he newspaper stories, were undoubted- 7 the work of one or the other or both these bugs. The first of these he escribes under the name of Reduvius r Opsicaetes personatus, known in 'urope whence it comes as the cannibal ug, a name which suggests that it had bad record before 1t came over. This lsect is about three-quarters of an inch l length and looks not unlike the com- $ on squash bug familiar to all men ho have ever done gardening. The I )ecies Reduvius is widespread, being ' und in Europe, Asia, the northern l irt of Africa Australia, and this coun- ! y. The date of it's introduction is not V 1own but it is surrnised that it was a lported soon after the coming of the | 'dbug upon which it preys. Reduvius a 'rsonatus has been taken in Virginia, V Istrict of Columbia, Maryland, New t ork Ohio, and Iowa. It is furnished I th a long beak or rostrum which it 4 rusts into it's prey, and it is this in- c with which the poisonous bite o inflicted. The bite is described as be- s g more painful than the sting of u e. Under the name of Reduvius pun W ms Le Conte describes an insect prob tt ly identical with Reduvius personatus a lich he found in Georgia. 1T This species,'' he says, lis remark d le for the intense pain caused by it's ss @. do not know whether it ever will sl gly plunses it's rostrum into any per d n, but when caught or unskillfully s1 ndled it always stings. In this case tf , pain is almost equal to that of the sI 6 of snake and the swelling and W itation which result from it will some- W les last fer week. In very weak and pi itable constitutions it may even prove al" co When the kissing bug made it's ap- w ,rance scientists identified ii as Me of olestes picipee at first, until details qt m many parts of the country show pl that this species alone could not be b1 q responsible for the injuries. This ca cies together with Melanolestes sc lominalis which is very much like it, do