56 The Book of Bugs. 



blood to be had without money and without price. Wings 

 were well enough in their way, no doubt, but if one is 

 anxious to travel it is cheaper to let the other fellow do the 

 locomotion and you ride about on him. If all the energy 

 that was wasted in beating the slippery air couid go into 

 legs and leg-muscles, anybody with half an eye, which is 

 about what a flea's eye amounts to, could see that it would 

 be a good thing. Still, lest anybody should say to a flea : 

 " Ah, you couldn't raise wings anyhow. I don't believe 

 you ever had any," it was thought advisable to retain a 

 tiny, wee scale on each side to show the place for them. 

 That sort of saves their self-respect. 



There are about a hundred charted kinds of fleas in 

 the world and about thirty of these are known in America 

 The flea you read about in European literature we do 

 not have here to any great extent. I believe Canada has 

 them. I suppose it seems more like ' home ' to have 

 the real English flea, but here in the States \ve manage to 

 plod along with what we have. The cat-and-dog flea 

 does very well for our purposes, and can set us to scram- 

 bling and nipping ourselves as vigorously and as futilelv 

 as if it were the high-class flea of the court of St. James's 

 itself. All thick-furred animals have them, as well as 

 birds. Each species seems to be addicted to a particular 

 animal, but all are enough alike to recognize each other 

 as belonging to the same lodge. 



Their specialty is a compressed shape from side to 

 side, like a flax-seed stood on edge and fitted out with 

 legs. Just to show how admirably constructed they are 

 for getting through the jungle of upstanding hairs in 

 which they live, the little bristles on their legs all slant 

 backward from their heads. The old-fashioned ' razor- 

 back " hog was built on the same lines. The creature 

 euphemistically called the B flat is the exact opposite of 



