90 ANIMAL PAEASITES. 



the form of a club and clothed with radiating bristles towards the 

 outside, so that these ends have the appearance of an old German 

 " morning star " (morgenstern}. On the abdomen the male has 

 also two roundish valves or clasping organs. 



The female is larger, and has the last segment of its abdomen 

 obtusely conical, and either pointed or rounded off; this is so 

 amalgamated with the pygidium, that we can scarcely find in it 

 the projecting angle indicated. The hairs are more numerous, 

 and reach up to the dorsal surface. On the abdomen it has a 

 verruciform, fringed lobe. 



The copulation takes place belly to belly. The oval white eggs 

 are pretty large Q'"), barrel-shaped, broad, but slightly arched, 

 and uniformly flattened at both poles. The vitelline membrane 

 is as usual, the chorion strong, thick, uneven, scaly, and beset 

 with innumerable, small, flat, approximated pits. 



Leuckart shows that the simple micropyle is wanting in these 

 eggs, and they are consequently distinguished from the Diptera ; 

 he states that the micropyles are found in a number of cribriform 

 apertures, upon a round field of ^'" ', at both poles of the egg. The 

 upper apertures are larger than the lower ones, and somewhat 

 more numerous (50 60 above, 40 45 below). In these the 

 seminal filaments are found. In profile the micropyles appear as 

 perpendicular canals, leading straight through the chorion and 

 vitelline membrane, and dilated in form of a funnel externally. 

 The eggs are deposited in sweepings, dust, and, in dirty people, 

 under the nails, especially the toe-nails ; in two days they allow 

 the escape of apodal larvse, which bear small tufts of hair upon the 

 segments, and two small hooks upon the last segment ; they move 

 very briskly, afterwards become reddish, and have a head which is 

 scaly above, with two short antennae, but without eyes. The pupa 

 is developed in a small shell. 1 



Vogt states that only the females bite and suck the blood of 

 men. The anatomical structure of the head, and especially of the 

 proboscis, does not justify this supposition, which I, for my own 

 part, cannot confirm. One day, on my return from my pa- 

 tients, whilst writing, I felt a pretty sharp bite on the right thigh, 

 and simultaneously another, but weaker one, on the upper arm. 

 As I was desirous of making a couple of microscopic preparations 

 of the oral organs of the flea, I undressed myself, and captured a 

 female flea on the thigh and a male on the arm. I had felt pain 



1 The 'Veterinarian,' London, 1855, p. 335. 



