190 THOSE OTHER ANIMALS. 



and occasionally taking up his abode in the warm and cosy 

 dwellings of the rich, the flea is by no means particular, and 

 makes himself equally at home in the tent of the Arab, the 

 hovel of the Mexican, the snowhouse of the Esquimaux, 

 the cottage of the Spaniard, or the hut of the Persian. He 

 will exist in the sand, and wait patiently for the chance 

 passage of something he can devour ; but his preferences 

 lie in the direction of crowded tenements, and the dirtier 

 and more untidy the better. The flea rivals the dog in his 

 affection for man ; he will cling to him to the last, and 

 anger and even execrations do not shake his attachment. 

 He is of a lively disposition, and there is nothing that he 

 enjoys more than being hunted, entering thoroughly into 

 the spirit of the thing, showing himself occasionally to in- 

 spire his eager pursuer with hope, and then disappearing 

 into air. With other creatures it is generally safe to infer 

 that they will leap forward. The flea, however, is bound by 

 no rules, and can spring backward, forward, or sideways 

 with equal ease. The power of his hind legs is prodigious, 

 and it is well for man that he prefers to remain small, for 

 a flea who took into his head to grow even as large as a cat 

 would be a very formidable creature. It has been calculated 

 by an American man of science that if the mule had the 

 same proportionate power in his hind legs as has the flea, 

 he could kick an ordinary-sized man 33 miles 1004 yards 

 and 21 inches. Mankind has therefore good reason for 

 congratulating itself upon the fact that the flea has not, in 

 the course of his career, had any ambition in the direction 

 of size, and that the smallest and most active only survived 

 in the struggle for existence. 



The habits of a flea have not been sufficiently investigated 



