ORDER XI. 



ANOPLEURA. 



Pediculidse— 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.^ 



Respecting the revenue of Montecusuma, which consisted 

 of the natural products of the country, and what was pro- 

 duced 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, im- 

 mediately communicated what he had seen to Cortes, who 

 then asked Marina and Anguilar for some explanation. 

 Tiiey 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 



1 Bayle, iii. 484. Southey's Com. Place Bk., 4th S. p. 439. 

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