Chapter XII: Part 12

The larvæ of this insect, says Mr. Clark, are mostly known among the country people by the name of _wormals_, _wormuls_, _warbles_, or, more properly, _Bots_. And our ancestors erroneously imagined that poverty or improper food engendered them in horses. The truth, however, seems to be, that when the animal is kept without food the Bots are also, and are then, without doubt, most troublesome; whence it was very naturally supposed that poverty or bad food was the parent of them.[1013]

A cow with its hide perforated by Warbles, in England, was said to be elf-shot: the holes being made by the arrows of the little malignant fairies. In the Northern Antiquities, p. 404, we find the following:

“If at such a time you were to look through an elf-bore in wood, where a thorter knot has been taken out, or through the hole made by an elf-arrow (which has probably been made by a Warble) in the skin of a beast that has been elf-shot, you may see the elf-bull naiging (butting) with the strongest bull or ox in the herd; but you will never see with that eye again.”

In the Scottish history of the trials of witches, we find the following: Alexander Smaill offended Jonet Cock, who threatened him, “deare sail yow rewe it! and within half ane howre therafter, going to the pleugh,--befoir he had gone one about, their came ane great Wasp or Bee, so that the foir horses did runne away with the pleugh, and wer liklie to have killed themselves, and the said Alexander and the boy that was with him, narrowlie escaped with their lyves.”[1014] Possibly the incident is not exaggerated, as a single Œstrus will turn the oxen of a whole herd, and render them furious.

* * * * *

Spencer, in his Travels in Circassia, speaks of a poisonous Fly, known in Hungary under the name of the Golubaeser-fly, which is singularly destructive to cattle. The Hungarian peasants, to account for the severity of the bite of this insect, tell us that in the caverns, near the Castle of Golubaes, the renowned champion, St. George, killed the dragon, and that its decomposed remains have continued to generate these insects down to the present day. So firmly did they believe this, that they closed up the mouths of the caverns with stone walls.[1015]

ORDER X.

APHANIPTERA.

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 Ark,” says the legend, “sprung a leak by striking against a rock in the vicinity of Mount Sindshar, and Noah despaired altogether of safety, the serpent promised to help him out of his mishap if he would engage to feed him upon human flesh after the deluge had subsided. Noah pledged himself to do so; and the serpent coiling himself up, drove his body into the fracture and stopped the leak. When the pluvious element was appeased, and all were making their way out of the ark, the serpent insisted upon the fulfillment of the pledge he had received; but Noah, by Gabriel’s advice, committed the pledge to the flames, and scattering its ashes in the air, there arose out of them Fleas, Flies, Lice, Bugs, and all such sort of vermin as prey upon human blood, and after this fashion was Noah’s pledge redeemed.”[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 Venice and Augsburg Fleas for sale, and at a small price too, decorated with steel or silver collars around their necks, of which Willughby purchased one. When they are kept in a box amongst wool or cloth, in a warm place, and fed once a day, they will live a long time. When they begin to suck they erect themselves almost perpendicularly, thrusting their sucker, which originates in the middle of the forehead, into the skin. The itching is not felt immediately, but a little afterwards. As soon as they are full of blood, they begin to void a portion of it, and thus, if permitted, they will continue for many hours sucking and voiding. After the first itching no uneasiness is subsequently felt. Willughby’s Flea lived for three months by sucking in this manner the blood of his hand; it was at length killed by the cold of winter.”[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, printed 1650, quotes this passage from Pliny, calling it “A very easie and merry conceit to keep off fleas from your beds or chambers.”[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 also, concludes this writer, from the most villous and from the thickest pieces of tapestry, whither, they betake themselves when full, if goats’ blood is set in a vessel or in a cork.[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 some handfuls of wool from thorns and briars, and wrapping it up, he holds it fast in his mouth, then goes by degrees into a cold river, and dipping himself close by little and little, when he finds that all the Fleas are crept so high as his head for fear of drowning, and so for shelter crept into the wool, he barks and spits out the wool, full of Fleas, and so very froliquely being delivered from their molestation, he swims to land.”[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 fixed him as a mark where he left off, and continued to use him so through the volume.[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 were satisfied there was no deception.[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 edited the collection, upon a Flea which was found one morning in the bosom of the famous Catherine des Roches.[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]

ORDER XI.

ANOPLEURA.

Pediculidæ--Lice.

At Hurdenburg, in Sweden, Mr. Hurst tells us the mode of choosing a burgomaster is this: The persons eligible sit around, with their beards upon a table; a Louse is then put in the middle of the table, and the one, in whose beard this insect first takes cover, is the magistrate for the ensuing year.[1062]

Respecting the revenue of Montecusuma, which consisted of the natural products of the country, and what was produced by the industry of his subjects, we find the following story in Torquemada: “During the abode of Montecusuma among the Spaniards, in the palace of his father, Alonzo de Ojeda one day espied in a certain apartment of the building a number of small bags tied up. He imagined at first that they were filled with gold dust, but on opening one of them, what was his astonishment to find it quite full of Lice? Ojeda, greatly surprised at the discovery he had made, immediately communicated what he had seen to Cortes, who then asked Marina and Anguilar for some explanation. They informed him that the Mexicans had such a sense of their duty to pay tribute to their monarch, that the poorest and meanest of the inhabitants, if they possessed nothing better to present to their king, daily cleaned their persons, and saved all the Lice they caught, and that when they had a good store of these, they laid them in bags at the feet of their monarch.” Torquemada further remarks, that his reader might think these bags were filled with small worms (gasanillos), and not with Lice; but appeals to Alonzo de Ojeda, and another of Cortes’ soldiers, named Alonzo de Mata, who were eye-witnesses of the fact.[1063]

Oviedo pretends to have observed that Lice, at the elevation of the tropics, abandon the Spanish sailors that are going to the Indies, and attack them again at the same point on their return. The same is reported in Purchas’s Pilgrims.[1064] One of the supplementary writers to Cuvier’s History of Insects says: “This is an observation that has need of being corroborated by more certain testimonies than we are yet in possession of. But, if true, there would be nothing in the fact very surprising. A degree of considerable heat, and a more abundant perspiration, might prove unfavorable to the propagation of the _Pediculi corporis_. As their skin is more tender, the influence of the air might prove detrimental to them in those burning climates.”[1065]

We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims, that “if Lice doe much annoy the natives of Cambaia and Malabar, they call to them certain Religious and holy men, after their account: and these Observants y will take upon them all those Lice which the other can find, and put them on their head, there to nourish them. But yet for all this lousie scruple, they stick not to coozenage by falese weights, measures, and coyne, nor at usury and lies.”[1066]

In a side-note to this curious passage, we find: “The like lousie trick is reported in the Legend of S. _Francis_, and in the life of Ignatius, of one of the Jesuitical pillars, by Moffæus.”

Steedman says of the Caffres, that “except an occasional plunge in a river, they never wash themselves, and consequently their bodies are covered with vermin. On a fine day their karosses are spread out in the sun, and as their tormentors creep forth they are doomed to destruction. It often happens that one Caffir performs for another the kind office of collecting these insects, in which case he preserves the entomological specimens, carefully delivering them to the person to whom they originally appertained, supposing, according to their theory, that as they derived their support from the blood of the man from whom they were taken, should they be killed by another, the blood of his neighbor would be in his possession, thus placing in his hands the power of some superhuman influence.”[1067]

Kolben says the Hottentots eat the largest of the Lice with which they swarm; and that if asked how they can devour such detestable vermin, they plead the law of retaliation, and urge that it is no shame to eat those who would eat them--“They suck our blood, and we devour ’em in revenge.”[1068]

We are assured in Purchas’s Pilgrims, that Lice and “long wormes” were sold for food in Mexico.[1069] From this ancient collection of Travels, we learn that when the Indians of the Province of Cuena are infected with Lice, “they dresse and cleanse one another; and they that exercise this, are for the most part women, who eate all that they take, and have herein (eating?) such dexterity by reason of their exercise, that our own men cannot lightly attaine thereunto.”[1070]

The Budini, a people of Scythia, commonly feed upon Lice and other vermin bred upon their bodies.[1071]

Mr. Wafer, in his description of the Isthmus of America, says: “The natives have Lice in their Heads, which they feel out with their Fingers, and eat as they catch them.”[1072] Dobrizhoffer also mentions that Lice are eaten by the Indian women of South America.[1073]

The disgusting practice of eating these vermin is not confined to the Hottentots, the Negroes of Western Africa, the Simiæ, and the American Indians, for it has been observed to prevail among the beggars of Spain and Portugal.[1074]

Schroder, in his History of Animals that are useful in Physic, says: “Lice are swallowed by country people against the jaundice.”[1075] As a specific against this disease, Beaumont and Fletcher thus allude to them:

Die of the jaundice, yet have the cure about you: lice, large lice,
begot of your own dust and the heat of the brick kilns.[1076]

Lice were also made use of in cases of Atrophy, and Dioscorides says they were employed in suppressions of urine, being introduced into the canal of the urethra.[1077]

In the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1746, there is a curious letter on “a certain _creature_, of rare and extraordinary qualities”--a Louse, containing many humorous observations on this “_lover_ of the human race,” and concluding with some queries as to its origin and pedigree. “Was it,” the writer asks, “created within the six days assigned by _Moses_ for the formation of all things? If so, where was its habitation? We can hardly suppose that it was quartered on _Adam_ or his lady, the neatest, nicest pair (if we believe _John Milton_) that ever joyned hands. And yet, as it disdained to graze the fields, or lick the dust for sustenance, where else could it have had its subsistence?”[1078]

In a modern account of Scotland, written by an English gentleman, and printed in the year 1670, we find the following: “In that interval between Adam and Moses, when the Scottish Chronicle commences, the country was then baptized (and most think with the sign of the cross) by the venerable name of Scotland, from Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. Hence came the rise and name of these present inhabitants, as their Chronicle informs us, and is not to be doubted of, from divers considerable circumstances; the plagues of Egypt being entailed upon them, that of Lice (being a judgment unrepealed) is an ample testimony, these loving animals accompanied them from Egypt, and remain with them to this day, never forsaking them (but as rats leave a house) till they tumble into their graves.”[1079]

Linnæus, seemingly very anxious to become an apologist for the Lice, gravely observes that they probably preserve children who are troubled with them, from a variety of complaints to which they would be liable![1080]

As an attempt toward discovering the intention of Providence in permitting the frequency of these tormenting animals, the following lines of Serenus may be given:

See nature, kindly provident ordain
Her gentle stimulants to harmless pain;
Lest Man, the slave of rest, should waste away
In torpid slumber life’s important day!

Of the horrible disease, Phthiriasis, occasioned by myriads of Lice, _Pediculi_, and sometimes by Mites, _Acari_, and _Larvæ_ in general, I shall but mention that the inhuman Pheretrina, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Dictator Sylla, the two Herods, the Emperor Maximin, and Philip the Second were among the number carried off by it.

Quintus Serenus speaks thus of the death of Sylla:

Great Sylla too the fatal scourge hath known;
Slain by a host far mightier than his own.

According to Pliny, Nits are destroyed by using dog’s fat, eating serpents cooked like eels, or else taking their sloughs in drink.[1081]

In Leyden’s Notes to Complaynt of Scotland are recorded the following few rhymes of the Gyre-carlin--the bug-bear of King James V.

The Mouse, the Louse, and Little Rede,
Were a’ to mak’ a gruel in a lead.

The two first associates desire Little Rede to go to the door, to “see what he could see.” He declares that he saw the gyre-carlin coming,

With spade, and shool, and trowel,
To lick up a’ the gruel.

Upon which the party disperse:

The Louse to the claith,
And the Mouse to the wa’,
Little Rede behind the door,
And licket up a’.[1082]

ORDER XII.

ARACHNIDA.[1083]

Acaridæ--Mites.

The white spot on the back of a certain species of Wood-tic (_Acarus_) is said to be the spot where the pin went through the body when Noah pinned it in the Ark to keep it from troubling him.

Phalangidæ--Daddy-Long-legs.

A superstition obtains among our cow-boys that if a cow be lost, its whereabouts may be learned by inquiring of the Daddy-Long-legs (Phalangium), which points out the direction of the lost animal with one of its fore legs.

In England, the Phalangium has been christened the Harvest-man, from a superstitious belief that if it be killed there will be a bad harvest.[1084]

Pedipalpi--Scorpions.

Concerning the generation of the Scorpion, Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, printed in 1658, treats as follows:

“Now, then, it followeth that we inquire about the manner of their (Scorpions’) breed or generation, which I find to be double, as divers authors have observed, one way is by putrefaction, and the other by laying of egges, and both these ways are consonant to nature, for Lacinius writeth that some creatures are generated only by propagation of seed--such are men, vipers, whales, and the palm-tree; some again only by putrefaction, as mice, Scorpions, Emmets, Spiders, purslain, which, first of all, were produced by putrefaction, and since their generation are conserved by the seed and egges of their own kinde. Now, therefore, we will first of all speak of the generation of Scorpions by putrefaction, and afterward by propagation.

“Pliny saith[1085] that when Sea-crabs dye, and their bodies are dried upon the earth, when the sun entereth into Cancer and Scorpius, out of the putrefaction thereof ariseth a Scorpion; and so out of the putrefied body of the crefish burned arise Scorpions, which caused Ovid thus to write:

Concava littoreo si demas brachia cancro,
Cætera supponas terræ, de parte sepulta
Scorpius exibit, caudaque minabitur unca.

And again:

Obrutus exemptis cancer tellure lacertis,
Scorpius exiguo tempore factus erit.

In English thus:

If that the arms you take from Sea-crab-fish,
And put the rest in earth till all consumed be,
Out of the buried part a Scorpion will arise,
With hooked tayl doth threaten for to hurt thee.

“And therefore it is reported by Ælianus that about Estamenus, in India, there are abundance of Scorpions generated only by corrupt rain-water standing in that place. Also out of the Basalisk beaten into pieces and so putrefied are Scorpions engendered. And when as one had planted the herb basilica on a wall, in the room or place thereof he found two Scorpions. And some say that if a man chaw in his mouth fasting this herb basill before he wash, and afterward lay the same abroad uncovered where no sun cometh at it for the space of seven nights, taking it in all the daytime, he shall at length finde it transmuted into a Scorpion, with a tayl of seven knots.[1086]

“Hollerius,[1087] to take away all scruple of this thing, writeth that in Italy in his dayes there was a man that had a Scorpion bred in his brain by continuall smelling to this herb basill; and Gesner, by relation of an apothecary in France, writeth likewise a story of a young maid who, by smelling to basill, fell into an exceeding headache, whereof she died without cure, and after death, being opened, there were found little Scorpions in her brain.

“Aristotle remembreth an herb which he calleth sissimbria, out of which putrefied Scorpions are engendered, as he writeth. And we have shewed already, in the history of the Crocodile, that out of the Crocodile’s egges do many times come Scorpions, which at their first egression do kill their dam that hatched them, which caused Archelaus, which wrote epigrams of wonders unto Ptolemæus, to sing of Scorpions in this manner:

In vos dissolvit morte, et redigit crocodilum
Natura extinctum, Scorpii omnipotens.

Which may be Englished thus:

To you by Scorpions death the omnipotent
Ruines the crocodil in nature’s life extinct.”[1088]

The remarks referred to by Topsel in the last paragraph in his history of the Crocodile are as follows:

“It is said by Philes that, after the egge is laid by the crocodile, many times there is a cruel Stinging Scorpion which cometh out thereof, and woundeth the crocodile that laid it.[1089]

“The Scorpion also and the crocodile are enemies one to the other, and therefore when the Egyptians will describe the combat of two notable enemies, they paint a crocodile and a Scorpion fighting together, for ever one of them killeth another; but if they will decipher a speedy overthrow to one’s enemy, then they picture a crocodile; if a slow and slack victory, they picture a Scorpion.”[1090]

“Some maintain,” says Moufet, “that they (Scorpions) are not bred by copulation, but by exceeding heat of the sun. Ælian, _lib. 6_, _de Anim. cap. 22_, among whom Galen must first be blamed, who in his Book _de fœt. form._ will not have nature, but chance to be the parent of Scorpions, Flies, Spiders, Worms of all sorts, and he ascribes their beginning to the uncertain constitutions of the heavens, place, matter, heat, etc.”[1091]

Topsel further says: “The principall of all other subjects of their (the Scorpions’) hatred are virgins and women, whom they do not only desire to harm, but also when they have harmed are never perfectly recovered. (Albertus)....

“The lion is by the Scorpion put to flight wheresoever he seeith it, for he feareth it as the enemy of his life, and therefore writeth S. Ambrose, _Exiguo Scorpionis aculeo exagitatur leo_, the lion is much moved at the small sting of a Scorpion.”[1092]

Naude tells us that there is a species of Scorpions in Italy, which are so domesticated as to be put between sheets to cool the beds during the heat of summer.[1093] Pliny mentions that the Scorpions of Italy are harmless.[1094]

Among the curious things recorded by Pliny concerning the Scorpion, the following have been selected: Some writers, he says, are of opinion that the Scorpion devours its offspring, and that the one among the young which is the most adroit avails itself of its sole mode of escape by placing itself on the back of the mother, and thus finding a place where it is in safety from the tail and the sting. The one that thus escapes, they say, becomes the avenger of the rest, and at last, taking advantage of its elevated position, puts its parent to death.[1095]

According to Pliny, those who carry the plant “tricoccum,” or, as it is also called, “scorpiuron,”[1096] about their person are never stung by a Scorpion, and it is said, he continues, that if a circle is traced on the ground around a Scorpion with a sprig of this plant, the animal will never move out of it, and that if a Scorpion is covered with it, or even sprinkled with the water in which it has been steeped, it will die that instant.[1097]

Attalus assures us, says Pliny, that if a person, the moment he sees a Scorpion, says “Duo,”[1098] the reptile will stop short and forbear to sting.[1099]

Concerning Scorpions, Diophanes, contemporary with Cæsar and Cicero, has collected the following several opinions of the more ancient writers: If you take a Scorpion, he says, and burn it, the others will betake themselves to flight: and if a person carefully rubs his hands with the juice of radish, he may without fear and danger take hold of Scorpions, and of other reptiles: and radishes laid on Scorpions instantly destroy them. You will also cure the bite of a Scorpion, by applying a silver ring to the place. A suffumigation of sandarach[1100] with galbanum, or goat’s fat, will drive away Scorpions and every other reptile. If a person will also boil a Scorpion in oil, and will rub the place bit by a Scorpion, he will stop the pain.[1101] But Apuleius says, that if a person bit by a Scorpion sits on an ass, turned toward its tail, that the ass suffers the pain, and that it is destroyed.[1102] Democritus says that a person bit by a Scorpion, who instantly says to his ass, “A Scorpion has bit me,” will suffer no pain, but it passes to the ass.[1103] The newt has an antipathy to the Scorpion: if a person, therefore, melts a newt in oil, and applies the oil to the person that is bitten, he frees him from pain. The same author also says that the root of a rose-tree being applied, cures persons bit by Scorpions. Plutarch recommends to fasten small nuts to the feet of the bed, that Scorpions may not approach it. Zoroaster says that lettuce-seed, being drunk with wine, cures persons bit by Scorpions. Florentinus says, if one applies the juice of the fig to the wound of a person just bitten, that the poison will proceed no farther; or, if the person bit eat squill, he will not be hurt, but he will say that the squill is pleasant to his palate. Tarentinus also says that a person holding the herb sideritis may take hold of Scorpions, and not be hurt by them.[1104] Dioscorides, among many other remedies for the sting of the Scorpion, prescribes “a fish called _Lacerta_, salted and cut in pieces; the barbel fish cut in two; the flesh of a fish called _Smaris_; house-mice cut asunder; horse or ass dung; the shell of an Indian small nut; ram’s flesh burnt; mummie, four grains, with butter and cow’s milk; a broiled Scorpion eaten; river-crabs raw and bruised, and drank with asses’ milk: locusts broiled and eaten,” etc. Rabby Moyses prescribes pigeon’s dung dried; Constantinus, hens’ dung, or the heart applied outwardly; Anatolius, crows’ dung; Averrhois, the bezoar-stone; Monus, silver; Silvaticus, from Serapis, pewter; and Orpheus, coral.

“Quintus Serenus writes thus, and adviseth:

These are small things, but yet their wounds are great,
And in pure bodies lurking do most harm,
For when our senses inward do retreat,
And men are fast asleep, they need some charm,
The Spider and the cruel Scorpion
Are wont to sting, witnesse great Orion,
Slayn by a Scorpion, for poysons small
Have mighty force, and therefore presently
Lay on a Scorpion bruised, to recall
The venome, or sea-water to apply
Is held full good, such virtue is in brine,
And ’tis approved to drink your fill of wine.

“And Macer writes of houseleek thus:

Men say that houseleek hath so soveraign a might,
Who carries but that, no Scorpion can him bite.”[1105]

The natives of South Africa, when bitten by a Scorpion, apply, as a remedy, a living frog to the wound, into which animal it is supposed the poison is transferred from the wound, and it dies; then they apply another, which dies also: the third perhaps only becomes sickly, and the fourth no way affected. When this is observed, the poison is considered to be extracted, and the patient cured. Another method is to apply a kidney, scarlet, or other bean, which swells; then apply another and another, till the bean ceases to be affected, when they consider the poison extracted.[1106]

There is a vast desert tract, says Pliny, on this side of the Ethiopian Cynamolgi--the “dog-milkers”--the inhabitants of which were exterminated by Scorpions and venomous ants.[1107]

Navarette tells us, in the account of his voyage to the Philippine Islands, that there was there in practice a good and easy remedy against the Scorpions which abound in that country. This was, when they went to bed, to make a commemoration of St. George. He himself, he says, for many years continued this devotion, and, “God be praised,” he adds, “the Saint always delivered me both there and in other countries from those and such like insects.” He confesses, however, they used another remedy besides, which was to rub all about the beds with garlic.[1108]

Navarette[1109] and Barbot[1110] both tell us that a certain remedy against the sting of a Scorpion, is to rub the wound with a child’s private member. This, the latter adds, immediately takes away the pain, and then the venom exhales. The moisture that comes from a hen’s mouth, Barbot says, is also good for the same.

The Persians believe that Scorpions may be deprived of the power of stinging, by means of a certain prayer which they make use of for that purpose. The person who has the power of “binding the Scorpion,” as it is called, turns his face toward the sign Scorpio, in the heavens, and repeats this prayer; while every person present, at the conclusion of a sentence, claps his hands. After this is done they think that they are perfectly safe; nor, if they should chance to see any Scorpions during that night, do they scruple to take hold of them, trusting to the efficacy of this fancied all-powerful charm. “I have frequently seen,” says Francklin, “the man in whose family I lived, repeat the above-mentioned prayer, on being desired by his children to bind the Scorpions; after which the whole family has gone quietly and contentedly to bed, fully persuaded that they could receive no hurt by them.”[1111]

Bell says the Persians “have such a dread of these creatures, that, when provoked by any person, they wish a Kashan Scorpion may sting him.”[1112]

An old story is, that a Scorpion surrounded with live coals, finding no method of escaping, grows desperate from its situation, and stings itself to death. This, though considered a mere fable of antiquity, may still have some truth, if we believe the following from the pen of Ulloa: “We more than once,” says this traveler, “entertained ourselves with an experiment of putting a Scorpion into a glass vessel, and injecting a little smoke of tobacco, and immediately by stopping it found that its aversion to this smell is such, that it falls into the most furious agitations, till, giving itself several stings on the head, it finds relief by destroying itself.”[1113] There is also told a story in the East Indies, that “the Scorpion is sometimes so pestered with the pismires, that he stings himself to death in the head with his tail, and so becomes a prey to the pismires.”[1114]

The Scorpion was an emblem of the Egyptian goddess Selk; and she is usually found represented with this animal bound upon her head.[1115]

Ælian mentions Scorpions of Coptos, which, though inflicting a deadly sting, and dreaded by the people, so far respected the Egyptian goddess Isis, who was particularly worshiped in that city, that women, in going to express their grief before her, walked with bare feet, or lay upon the ground, without receiving any injury from them.[1116]

The Ethiopians that dwell near the River Hydaspis commonly eat Scorpions and serpents without the slightest harm, “which certainly proceeds from no other thing than a secret and wonderful constitution of the body!” says Mercurialis.[1117]

Lutfullah, the learned Mohammedan gentleman, in his Autobiography, relates the following:

“On the morning of the 11th (April, 1839), I ordered my servant boy to shake my bedding and put it in the sun for an hour or so, that the moisture imbibed by the quilt might be dried. As soon as the quilt was removed from its place, what did I behold but an immense Scorpion, tapering towards its tail of nine vertebræ, armed with a sting at the end, crawling with impunity at the edge of the carpet. I had never seen such a large monster before. It was black in the body, with small bristles all over, dark green in the tail, and red at the sting. This hideous sight rendered me and the servant horror-struck. In the mean time, an Afghan friend of mine, by name Ata Mohamed Khan Kakar, a respectable resident of the town, honoured me with a visit, and, seeing the reptile, observed, ‘Lutfullah, you are a lucky man, having made a narrow escape this morning. This cursed worm is called Jerrara, and its fatal sting puts a period to animal life in a moment; return, therefore, your thanks to the Lord, all merciful, who gave you a new life in having saved you from the mortal sting of this evil bed-companion of yours.’ ‘I have no fear of the worm,’ replied I, ‘for it dare not sting me unless it is written in the book of fate to be stung by it.’ Saying this, I made the animal crawl into a small earthen vessel, and stopped the mouth of it with clay; and then making a large fire, I put the vessel therein for an hour or so, to turn the reptile into ashes, which, administered in doses of half a grain to adults, are a specific remedy for violent colicky pains.”[1118]

The ashes of burnt Scorpions, besides being good for colicky pains, as Lutfullah says, were often prescribed by the ancient physicians for stone in the bladder;[1119] and Topsel, quoting Kiranides, has the following: “If a man take a vulgar Scorpion and drown the same in a porringer of oyl in the wane of the moon, and therewithall afterward anoynt the back from the shoulders to the hips, and also the head and forehead, with the tips of the fingers and toes of one that is a demoniack or a lunatick person, it is reported, that he shall ease and cure him in short time. And the like is reported of the Scorpion’s sting joyned with the top of basil wherein is seed, and with the heart of a swallow, all included in a piece of harts skin.”[1120] The oil of Scorpions, Brassavolus says, “drives out worms miraculously;” and oil of Scorpions’ and vipers’ “tongues is a most excellent remedy against the plague, as Crinitus testifies, i. 7.”[1121] Galen prescribes Scorpions for jaundice, and Kiranides the same for the several kinds of ague. “Plinius Secundus saith, that a quartan ague, as the magicians report, will be cured in three daies by a Scorpion’s four last joynts of his tail, together with the gristle of his ear, so wrapped up in a black cloth, that the sick patient may neither perceive the Scorpion that is applied, nor him that bound it on.... Samonicus commends Scorpions against pains in the eyes, in these verses:

If that some grievous pain perplex thy sight,
Wool wet in oyl is good bound on all night.
Carry about thee a live Scorpion’s eye,
Ashes of coleworts if thou do apply,
With bruised frankincense, goat’s milk, and wine,
One night will prove this remedy divine.”[1122]

The following Asiatic fable of the Scorpion and the Tortoise is from the Beharistan of Jamy: A Scorpion, armed with pernicious sting and filthy poison, undertook a journey. Coming to the bank of a wide river, he stopped in great perplexity, wanting height of leg to cross over, yet very unwilling to return. A Tortoise, seeing his situation, and moved with compassion, took him on his back, sprang into the river, and was swimming toward the opposite shore, when he heard a noise on his shell as of something striking him; he called out to know what it was; the ungrateful Scorpion answered, “It is the motion of my sting only, I know it cannot affect you, but it is a habit which I cannot relinquish.” “Indeed,” replied the Tortoise, “then I cannot do better than free so evil-minded a creature from his bad disposition, and secure the good from his malevolence.” Saying which he dived under the water, and the waves soon carried the Scorpion beyond the bourn of existence.

When, in this banquet house of vice and strife,
A knave oft strikes the various stings of fraud,
’Tis best the sea of death ingulf him soon,
That he be freed from man, and man from him.[1123]

Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, has the following in his chapter on the Scorpion:

“There is a common adage, _Cornix Scorpium_, a Raven to a Scorpion, and it is used against them that perish by their own inventions: when they set upon others, they meet with their matches, as a raven did when it preyed upon a Scorpion, thus described by Alciatus, under his title _Justa ultio_, just revenge, saying as followeth:

Raptabat volucer captum pede corvus in auras
Scorpion, audaci præmia parta gulæ.
Ast ille infuso sensim per membra venemo,
Raptorem in stygias compulit ultor aquas.
O risu res digna! aliis qui fata parabat,
Ipse periit, propriis succubuitque dolis.

Which may be Englished thus:

The ravening crow for prey a Scorpion took
Within her foot, and therewithal aloft did flie,
But he empoysoned her by force and stinging stroke,
So ravener in the Stygian Lake did die.
O sportfull game! that he which other for bellyes sake did kill,
By his own deceit should fall into death’s will.