The eggs are white, changing to yellow and pink before hatching. The young hatch within twenty days and there are four nymphal stages. In all these stages the insect is active and predaceous, the mouth-parts (fig. 72) being powerfully developed. The eggs are normally deposited, and the early stages are undoubtedly passed, out of doors, the food of the immature forms being other insects. Immature specimens are rarely found indoors. It winters both in the partly grown and adult stage, often under the bark of trees or in any similar protection, and only in its nocturnal spring and early summer flights does it attack men. Marlatt states that this insect seems to be decidedly on the increase in the region which it particularly infests,--the plains region from Texas northward and westward. In California a closely related species of similar habits is known locally as the "monitor bug." The effect of the bite of the giant bed-bug on man is often very severe, a poisonous saliva apparently being injected into the wound. We have discussed this phase of the subject more fully under the head of poisonous insects. _Conorhinus megistus_ is a Brazilian species very commonly attacking man, and of special interest since Chagas has shown that it is the carrier of a trypanosomiasis of man. Its habits and life history have been studied in detail by Neiva, (1910). This species is now pre-eminently a household insect, depositing its eggs in cracks and crevices in houses, though this is a relatively recent adaptation. The nymphs emerge in from twenty to forty days, depending upon the temperature. There are five nymphal stages, and as in the case of true bed-bugs, the duration of these is very greatly influenced by the availability of food and by temperature. Neiva reckons the entire life cycle, from egg to egg, as requiring a minimum of three hundred and twenty-four days. The nymphs begin to suck blood in three to five days after hatching. They usually feed at night and in the dark, attacking especially the face of sleeping individuals. The bite occasions but little pain. The immature insects live in cracks and crevices in houses and invade the beds which are in contact with walls, but the adults are active flyers and attack people sleeping in hammocks. The males as well as the females are blood suckers. Like many blood-sucking forms, _Conorhinus megistus_ can endure for long periods without food. Neiva received a female specimen which had been for fifty-seven days alive in a tightly closed box. They rarely feed on two consecutive days, even on small quantities of blood, and were never seen to feed on three consecutive days. Methods of control consist in screening against the adult bugs, and the elimination of crevices and such hiding places of the nymphs. Where the infestation is considerable, fumigation with sulphur is advisable. PARASITIC DIPTERA OR FLIES