42 LICE AND THEIR MENACE TO MAN 



>. 



any garment of the infested person, either inside 

 or outside, but they are most prevalent inside 

 the shirt or undershirt, and trousers or drawers. 

 They are particularly liable to creep into deep 

 crevices such as the folds of a kilt or the waist- 

 band of pyjama trousers. 



It is important to remember in inspecting 

 people for lousiness that the eggs of this louse 

 may be laid on the hair of the body. In this 

 position they are very difficult to see, but if the 

 inspection is carried out carefully and in a good 

 light they will often be revealed. It is practically 

 impossible to say whether isolated eggs found in 

 these positions are those of this or the head-louse, 

 the only difference between them being the very 

 elusive one of size. The matter has therefore 

 been the subject of some controversy, as some 

 observers, perhaps unaware that the head-louse 

 may infest the body hair, have recorded the nits 

 of the body-louse in these positions in large 

 numbers. That body-lice do lay eggs on the 

 body hair we finally proved in the experiments 

 described in Chapter VIII., where men were 

 artificially infested with body-lice for a night. 

 In one experiment we found a dozen freshly laid 

 eggs on the pubic hair of one of the men who 

 was, of course, louse-free before the experiment. 

 To make quite certain that they had been laid 

 during this night, the eggs, after they had been 

 cut off, were incubated and in due course lice 

 emerged from them. 



