ORDER X. APHANIPTERA.
Reading edition
Pulicidæ—Fleas.
The name Pulex, given to the Flea by the Romans, is stated by Isodorus to have been derived from pulvis, dust, quasi pulveris filius. Our English name Flea, and the German Flock, are evidently deduced from the quick motions of this insect.
As to the origin of Fleas, Moufet had a similar notion to that contained in the word Pulex, if we adopt the etymology of Isodorus, for he says they are produced from the dust, especially when moistened with urine, the smallest ones springing from putrid matter. Scaliger relates that they are produced from the moistened humors among the hairs of dogs.1016 Conformable to the curious notion of Moufet, Shakspeare says:
2 Car. I think this be the most villainous house in all London road for fleas: I am stung like a tench.
1 Car. Like a tench? by the mass, there is ne’er a king in Christendom could be better bit than I have been since the first cock.
2 Car. Why, they will allow us ne’er a jorden, and then we leak in your chimney; and your chamber-ley breeds fleas like a loach.1017
“Martyr, the author of the Decads of Navigation, writes, that in Perienna, a countrey of the Indies, the drops of sweat that fall from their slaves’ bodies will presently turn to Fleas.”1018
Ewlin, in his book of Travels in Turkey, has recorded a singular tradition of the history of the Flea and its confraternity, as preserved among a sect of Kurds, who dwelt in his time at the foot of Mount Sindshar. “When Noah’s 1019
The Sandwich Islanders have the following tradition in regard to the introduction of Fleas into their country: Many years ago a woman from Waimea went out to a ship to see her lover, and as she was about to return, he gave her a bottle, saying that there was very little valuable property (waiwai) contained in it, but that she must not open it, on any account, until she reached the shore. As soon as she gained the beach, she eagerly uncorked the bottle to examine her treasure, but nothing was to be discovered,—the Fleas hopped out, and “they have gone on hopping and biting ever since.”1020
Our pigmy tormentor, Pulex irritans, in the opinion of some, seems to have been regarded as an agreeable rather than a repulsive object. “Dear Miss,” said a lively old lady to a friend of Kirby and Spence (who had the misfortune to be confined to her bed by a broken limb, and was complaining that the Fleas tormented her), “don’t you like Fleas? Well, I think they are the prettiest little merry things in the world.—I never saw a dull Flea in all my life.”1021 Dr. Townson, as mentioned by the above writers, from the encomium which he bestows upon these vigilant little vaulters, as supplying the place of an alarum and driving us from the bed of sloth, should seem to have regarded them with the same happy feelings.1022
When Ray and Willughby were traveling, they found “at 1023
We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims that a city of the Miantines is said to have been dispeopled by Fleas;1024 and Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, who found these insects more tormenting than all the other plagues of the Missouri country, say they sometimes here compel even the natives to shift their quarters.1025
Dr. Clarke was informed by an Arab Sheikh that “the king of the Fleas held his court at Tiberias.”1026
To prevent Fleas from breeding, Pliny gives the following curious recipe: “Since I have made mention of the cuckow,” says this writer, “there comes into my mind a strange and miraculous matter that the said magicians report of this bird; namely, that if a man, the first time that he heareth her to sing, presently stay his right foot in the very place where it was when he heard her, and withal mark out the point and just proportion of the said foot upon the ground as it stood, and then digg up the earth under it within the said compasse, look what chamber or roume of the house is strewed with the said mould, there will no Fleas bread there.”1027
Thomas Hill, in his Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions, 1028
The Hungarian shepherds grease their linen with hogs’ lard, and thus render themselves so disgusting even to the Fleas and Lice, as to put them effectually to flight.1029
There is still shown in the Arsenal at Stockholm a diminutive piece of ordnance, four or five inches in length, with which, report says, on the authority of Linnæus, the celebrated Queen Christiana used to cannonade Fleas.1030
But, seriously, if you wish for an effectual remedy, that prescribed by old Tusser, in his Points of Goode Husbandry, in the following lines, will answer your purpose:
While wormwood hath seed, get a handfull or twaine, To save against March, to make flea to refraine: Where chamber is sweeped and wormwood is strown, No flea for his life dare abide to be known.
The inhabitants of Dalecarlia place the skins of hares in their apartments, in which the Fleas willingly take refuge, so that they are easily destroyed by the immersion of the skin in scalding water.1031
Pamphilius among others gives the following remedies against Fleas: If a person, he says, sets a dish in the middle of the house, and draws a line around it with an iron sword (it will be better if the sword has done execution), and if he sprinkles the rest of the house, excepting the place circumscribed, with an irrigation of staphisagria, or of powdered leaves of the bay-tree, they having been boiled in brine or in sea-water, he will bring all the Fleas together into the dish. A jar also being set in the ground with its edge even with the pavement, and smeared with bulls’ fat, will attract all the Fleas, even those that are in the wardrobe. If you enter a place where there are Fleas, express the usual exclamation of distress, and they will not touch you. Make a small trench under a bed, and pour goats’ blood into it, and it will bring all the Fleas together, and it will allure those from your clothing. Fleas may be removed 1032
Moufet says: “A Gloeworm, set in the middle of the house, drives away Fleas.”1033
On the subject of destroying Fleas, the following pleasant piece of satire, by Poor Humphrey, will be read with a smile: “A notable projector became notable by one project only, which was a certain specific for the killing of fleas, and it was in form of a powder, and sold in papers, with plain directions for use, as followeth: The flea was to be held conveniently between the thumb and finger of the left hand; and to the end of the trunk or proboscis, which protrudeth in the flea, somewhat as the elephant’s doth, a very small quantity of the powder was to be put from between the thumb and finger of the right hand. And the deviser undertook, if any flea to whom his powder was so administered should prove to have afterwards bitten a purchaser who used it, then that purchaser should have another paper of the said powder gratis. And it chanced that the first paper thereof was bought idly, as it were, by an old woman, and she, without meaning to injure the inventor, or his remedy, but, of her mere harmlessness, did innocently ask him, whether, when she had caught the flea, and after she had got it, as before described, if she should kill it with her nail it would not be as well. Whereupon the ingenious inventor was so astonished by the question, that, not knowing what to answer on the sudden occasion, he said with truth to this effect, that without doubt her way would do, too. And according to the belief of Poor Humphrey, there is not as yet any device more certain or better for destroying a flea, when thou hast captured him, than the ancient manner of the old woman’s, or instead thereof, the drowning of him in fair water, if thou hast it by thee at the time.”1034
The old English hunters report that foxes are full of Fleas, and they tell the following queer story how they get rid of them: “The fox,” say they, as recorded by Mouffet, “gathers 1035
Ramsay thus alludes to this story:
Then sure the lasses, and ilk gaping coof, Wad rin about him, and had out their loof. M. As fast as fleas skip to the tale of woo, Whilk slee Tod Lowrie (the fox) hads without his mow, When he to drown them, and his hips to cool, In summer days slides backward in a pool.1036
Preceding this story, Mouffet makes the following observations: “The lesser, leaner, and younger they are, the sharper they bite, the fat ones being more inclined to tickle and play; and then are not the least plague, especially when in greater numbers, since they molest men that are sleeping, and trouble wearied and sick persons; from whom they escape by skipping; for as soon as they find they are arraigned to die, and feel the finger coming, on a sudden they are gone, and leap here and there, and so escape the danger; but so soon as day breaks, they forsake the bed. They then creep into the rough blankets, or hide themselves in rushes and dust, lying in ambush for pigeons, hens, and other birds, also for men and dogs, moles and mice, and vex such as passe by.”1037
It is frequently affirmed that asses are never troubled with Fleas or other vermin; and, among the superstitious, it is said that it is all owing to the riding of Christ upon one of these animals.1038
Willsford, in his Nature’s Secrets, printed 1658, p. 130, says: “The little sable beast (called a Flea), if much thirsting after blood, it argues rain.”1039
It is related that the Devil, teasing St. Domingo in the shape of a Flea, skipped upon his book, when the saint 1040
Fleas infesting beds were attributed to the envy of the Devil.1041
Giles Fletcher says that Iwan Yasilowich sent to the City of Moscow to provide for him a measure full of Fleas for a medicine. They answered that it was impossible, and if they could get them, yet they could not measure them because of their leaping out. Upon which he set a mulct upon the city of seven thousand rubles.1042
We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims that the Jews were not permitted to burn Fleas in the flame of their lamps on Sabbath evenings.1043
The muscular power of the Flea is so great that it can leap to the distance of two hundred times its own length, which will appear the more surprising when we consider that a man, were he endowed with equal strength and agility, would be able to leap between three and four hundred yards. Aristophanes, in his usual licentious way, ridicules the great Socrates for his pretended experiments on this great muscular power:
Disciple. That were not lawful to reveal to strangers.
Strepsiades. Speak boldly then as to a fellow-student; For therefore am I come.
Disc. Then I will speak; But set it down among our mysteries. It is a question put to Chærophon By our great master Socrates to answer, How many of his own lengths at a spring A Flea can hop; for one by chance had skipp’d Straight from the brow of Chærophon to th’ head Of Socrates.
Streps. And how did then the sage Contrive to measure this?
Disc. Most dext’rously. He dipp’d the insect’s feet in melted wax, Which hard’ning into slippers as it cool’d, By these computed he the question’d space.
Streps. O Jupiter, what subtilty of thought!1044
The witty Butler has also commemorated the same circumstance in his justly celebrated poem of Hudibras:
How many scores a Flea will jump Of his own length, from head to rump; Which Socrates and Chærophon In vain assay’d so long agon.
As illustrative of the strength of the Flea, the following facts may also be given: We read in a note to Purchas’s Pilgrims that “one Marke Scaliot, in London, made a lock and key and chain of forty-three links, all which a Flea did draw, and weighed but a grain and a half.”1045 Mouffet, who also records this fact, says he had heard of another Flea that was harnessed to a golden chariot, which it drew with the greatest ease.1046 Bingley tells us that Mr. Boverick, an ingenious watchmaker in the Strand, exhibited some years ago a little ivory chaise with four wheels, and all its proper apparatus, and the figure of a man sitting on the box, all of which were drawn by a single Flea. The same mechanic afterward constructed a minute landau, which opened and shut by springs, with the figures of six horses harnessed to it, and of a coachman on the box, a dog between his legs, four persons inside, two footmen behind it, and a postillion riding on one of the fore horses, which were all easily dragged along by a single Flea. He likewise had a chain of brass, about two inches long, containing two hundred links, with a hook at one end and a padlock and key at the other, which a Flea drew nimbly along.1047 At a fair of Charlton, in Kent, 1830, a man exhibited three Fleas harnessed to a carriage in form of an omnibus, at least fifty times their own bulk, which they pulled along with great ease; another pair drew a chariot, and a single Flea a brass cannon. The exhibitor showed the whole first through a magnifying glass, and then to the naked eye; so that all 1048 Latrielle also mentions a Flea of a moderate size, which dragged a silver cannon, mounted on wheels, that was twenty-four times its own weight, and which being charged with gunpowder was fired off without the Flea appearing in the least alarmed.1049
It is recorded in Purchas’s Pilgrims that an Egyptian artisan received a garment of cloth of gold for binding a Flea in a chain.1050
The Flea is twice mentioned in the Bible, and in both cases David, in speaking to Saul, applies it to himself as a term of humility.1051
A Prussian poet, quoted by Jaeger,1052 gives us the song of a young Flea who had emigrated to this country from Prussia, and thus expresses his dissatisfaction to his sweetheart:
Kennst de nunmehr das Land, we Dorngestripp und Disteln blüh’n, Im frost’gen Wald nur eckelhafte Tannenzapfen glüh’n, Der Schierling tief, und hoch der Sumach steht, Ein rauher Wind vom schwarzen Himmel weht; Kennst du es wohl? O lass uns eilig zieh’n, Und schnell zurück in unsre Hiemath flieh’n!
An English prose translation of which is: “Know’st thou now this country, where only briars and thistles bloom; where ugly fur-nuts only glow in the icy forest; where down in the vale the fetid hemlock grows, and on the hills the poisonous sumach; where heavy winds blow from black clouds over desolate lands? Dost thou not know of this country? Oh, then, let us fly in haste and return to our own fatherland!”
“To send one away with a Flea in his ear,” is a very old English phrase, meaning to dismiss one with a rebuke.1053 “Flea-luggit” is the Scottish—to be unsettled or confused.1054
There is a collection of poems called “La Puce des grands jours de Poitiers”—the Flea of the carnival of Poitiers. The poems were begun by the learned Pasquier, who 1055
During the winter of 1762, at Norwich, England, after a chilling storm of snow and wind that had destroyed many lives, myriads of Fleas were found skipping about on the snow.1056
To the Pulicidæ belongs also a native of the West Indies and South America, the Pulex penetrans, variously named in the countries where it is found, Chigoe, Jigger, Nigua, Tungua, and Pique. According to Stedman, this “is a kind of small sand-flea, which gets in between the skin and the flesh without being felt, and generally under the nails of the toes, where, while it feeds, it keeps growing till it becomes of the size of a pea, causing no further pain than a disagreeable itching. In process of time, its operation appears in the form of a small bladder, in which are deposited thousands of eggs, or nits, and which, if it breaks, produce so many young Chigoes, which, in course of time, create running ulcers, often of very dangerous consequence to the patient; so much so, indeed, that I knew a soldier the soles of whose feet were obliged to be cut away before he could recover; and some men have lost their limbs by amputation—nay, even their lives—by having neglected in time to root out these abominable vermin. The moment, therefore, that a redness and itching more than usual are perceived, it is time to extract the Chigoe that occasions them. This is done with a sharp-pointed needle, taking care not to occasion unnecessary pain, and to prevent the Chigoe from breaking in the wound. Tobacco ashes are put into the orifice, by which in a little time the sore is perfectly healed.”1057 The female slaves are generally employed to extract these pests, which they do with uncommon dexterity. Old Ligon tells us he had ten Chigoes taken out of his feet in a morning “by the most unfortunate Yarico,”1058 whose tragical story is now so celebrated in prose and verse. Mr. Southey says that many of the first settlers of Brazil, before they knew the remedy to extract the Chigoes, lost their feet in the most dreadful manner.1059
Walton, in his Present State of the Spanish Colonies, tells us of a Capuchin friar, who carried away with him a colony of Chigoes in his foot as a present to the Scientific Colleges in Europe; but, unfortunately for himself and for science, the length of the voyage produced mortification in his leg, that it became necessary to cut it off to save the zealous missionary’s life, and the leg, with all its inhabitants, were tumbled together into the sea.1060
Humboldt observes “that the whites born in the torrid zone walk barefoot with impunity in the same apartment where a European, recently landed, is exposed to the attack of this animal. The Nigua, therefore, distinguishes what the most delicate chemical analysis could not distinguish, the cellular membrane and blood of an European from those of a Creole white.”1061