INSECT PARASITISM 431 



INSECT PAEASITISM AND ITS PECULIARITIES 1 



By Professor WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER 



BUSSEY INSTITUTION, FOREST HILLS, MASS. 



TT is universally admitted that economic entomology, like such other 

 -L branches of applied biology as medicine and sanitary science, is 

 to a very considerable extent the strategics of our warfare with a host 

 of parasites, which are forever endeavoring to destroy our bodies, our 

 domestic animals, our food supply, our clothing and the very materials 

 with which we construct our dwellings and on which we write or print 

 our interpretations of the wonderful world in which we live. In other 

 words, economic entomology is, to nearly all intents and purposes, 

 merely that portion of applied parasitology which deals with insects. 

 Naturally, therefore, the destruction of the insect parasites of man and 

 of the plants and animals on which his very existence depends, must 

 always constitute the basic interest of this science. 



A vague notion of putting certain of the parasites themselves to 

 some use in the struggle to which I have referred, seems to have been 

 apprehended even in pre-scientific times and among primitive peoples. 

 We have read of savage tribes, which, like monkeys, eat their hexa- 

 pod ectoparasites. The Aztecs invented another use for these crea- 

 tures, as we learn from a quaint work published many years ago by 

 Cowan. 2 He cites the following story from Torquemada A respect- 

 ing the revenue of Montecusuma which consisted of the natural prod- 

 ucts of the country, and what was produced by the industry of his sub- 

 jects. During the abode of Montecusuma among the Spaniards, in the 

 palace of his father, Alonzo de Ojeda one day espied in a certain apart- 

 ment 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 



1 A lecture delivered at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, 

 Mass., August 8, 1911. In preparing the lecture for publication several footnotes 

 have been added and the concluding paragraphs have been rewritten. 



- "Curious Facts in the History of Insects," J. B. Lippincott & Co., Phila- 

 delphia, 1865. 



