22 ANIMAL PARASITES. 



fomes, perseverat affectio. Itaque prsestat unguento vel fotu eos 

 occidere, quo simul tollatur pruritus ille infestissimus." 



It is not easy for an author to arrive at such unmerited 

 honour as Moufet, who has copied what is good in this descrip- 

 tion, and added what is bad ; for example, even the statement 

 that the cause of disease cannot be removed with the needle. 1 

 After these authors, as Marti ny states, we have to mention par- 

 ticularly as writers upon the Sarcoptes Hauptmann, of Dres- 

 den (' Uralter Wolkensteinischer warmer Bade und Wasserchatz/ 

 Leipzig, 1657, and a letter to P. Kircher, who thought he had 

 seen the animals in the plague-boils, and figured them with six 

 feet and four hooks) ; Hafenreffer ( ( Nosodochium, cutis aflfectus/ 

 Ulm, 1660); and Redi, who in 1683 described and figured the 

 mites very well after a letter of Bonomo's, which was afterwards 

 claimed by Lanzoni for himself (' Osservazioni intorno a pellicelli 

 del corpo umano, dal G. C. Bonomo, Fiorcnze'), and was inserted in 

 the ' Miscellanea naturae curiosorum/ translated into Latin in 

 1691, but subsequently confounded with a letter of Cestoni to 

 Vallisneri in 1710, and arranged in the ' Collection Academique/ 

 The itch-mite is also referred to in the 'Acta Eruditorum/ 

 1682, and the ( Philosophical Transactions' for 1703. Linne, 

 whose scholar, Nyander, describes the actions of the mite very 

 well in his dissertation", 'Exanthemata viva, Upsal, 1757, accord- 

 ing to the opinion of most people never saw it, but mistook the 



1 A fundamental confusion prevails here, because one has copied from the other 

 without criticism. In the fifth book of his ' Historia Animalium,' cap. 31 , Aristotle treats 

 of the lice of men and animals, even those of the fishes and also of the ticks (Ixodidae}, 

 and states that the ass is without either lice or ticks. In the thirty-second chapter he 

 no longer treats of lice, hut of the moths, Acari, the paper-mite, &c. Aldrovandi, on 

 his part, has fallen into an error, in appending the Aristotelian Yearns immediately to 

 the Scirrones, the true human itch-mites, merely on account of their smallness. In a 

 remarkable manner Aldrovandi also allows the Aristotelian Icarus to he an animal 

 living in wax, probably misled by the edition which he used, and which was probably 

 the Leyden edition of 1590 also used by me. In this, in the text edited by Theodor 

 Gaza, stands xrii iv xrjpy yi vtrai, whilst we should read with Sylburg, lv rvp< = in 

 caseo. The Aristotelian Icarus is nothing but the common cheese-mite. The case 

 of Aldrovandi, who refrained from giving an opinion upon the Icarus in wax, 

 because he found no Icarus in wax in Italy, is the case also with us in Germany, and 

 will be the case with everyone everywhere. I have inquired about wax-mites from a 

 well-informed artisan, now seventy years of age, who has been in contact with wax from 

 his youth, but he assures me that he had never seen or heard of such a thing. Then to 

 make the confusion complete, Moufet mixes all together, and describes the mite as living 

 in cheese and wax, but at the same time also in the human skin. 



