DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 101 



happily view them in this unfavourable light, and have 

 found ordinary methods unavailing for ridding yourself 

 of these unbidden guests ; I can furnish you with a pro- 

 batum est recipe, which the first-mentioned traveller tells 

 us the Hungarian shepherds (who seem to have been stu- 

 pidly insensible to their value as alarums) find com- 

 pletely effectual to put to flight these insects and their 

 neighbours the lice. This is not, as you may be tempted 

 to think, by a remarkable attention to cleanliness. 

 Quite the reverse. They grease their linen with hog's 

 lard, and thus render themselves disgusting even to 

 fleas ! If this does not satisfy, I have another recipe in 

 store for you. You may shoot at them with a cannon, 

 as report says did Christina queen of Sweden, whose 

 piece of artillery, of Lilliputian calibre, which was em- 

 ployed in this warfare, is still exhibited in the arsenal of 

 Stockholm*. But, seriously, if you wish for an effectual 

 remedy, that prescribed by old Tusser, in the following 

 lines, will answer your purpose : 



" While wormwood hath seed, get a handfull or twaine, 

 To save against March, to make flea to refraine : 

 Where chamber is sweeped, and wormwood is strown, 

 No flea for his life dare abide to be known." 



To this genus belongs an insect, abundant in the 

 West Indies and South America, the attacks of which 

 are infinitely more serious than those of the common 

 flea. You will readily conjecture that I am speaking of 

 the celebrated Chigoe or Jiggers, called also Nigua, 

 Tungua, and Pique b , (Pulex penetrans^) one of the 



a Linn. Lack. Lapp. ii. 32. note *. 



b Latreille after De Geer (vii. 153 .) supposes the Pique and. Nigua 

 of Ulloa to be synonymous with Ixodes america?ms, L. Hist. Nat. vii. 

 364. but it is evident from Ulloa 's description ( Voy. i. 63. Engl. Trans.) 

 that they are synonymous with the Chigoe, or Pulcx penetrans. 



