270 OUR HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



"swords." As they brandish their legs about in their 

 efforts to liberate themselves from their constrained 

 position, it will occasionally happen that their " swords " 

 will meet and produce the semblance of the clashing of 

 weapons in a combat. Frank Buckland, in the account 

 he gives of performing fleas, speaks of the supply as 

 coming chiefly from elderly females (!), and of the price 

 as ranging from 3d. a dozen in summer to 6d. in winter. 

 He also states that the best fleas for this purpose are 

 obtained from Russia, whence they are sent in pill-boxes, 

 packed in \cotton wool. 



The common flea is cosmopolitan in distribution ; not 

 so, however, that far more formidable but allied pest, 

 the chigoe or jigger (Sarcopsylla penetrans) of tropical 

 America. This villainous insect (Fig. 84), a short notice 

 of which may appropriately close this chapter, is some- 

 thing like a small flea, and is particularly noteworthy 

 for two peculiarities, viz., the enormous size to which 

 the abdomen of the female swells, by reason of the 

 development of the eggs, and the marvellous habit . it 

 has of burrowing beneath the skin of its victims, thereby 

 producing intense pain, ulcerations, and even sometimes 

 death. It is only the female that thus burrows. After 

 impregnation, she seeks the foot of a suitable host, and 

 by means of her powerful mandibular lancets, perforates 

 the skin obliquely, usually beneath the toe-nail, and 

 works herself under the surface till the tip of the 

 abdomen only is visible. While she is in this position, 

 the eggs, which are said to be as many as a hundred in 

 number, advance towards maturity, and the body of the 

 insect now swells to a large globular form, the head and 

 thorax, of course, still retaining their original diminutive 

 proportions ; the increase in size continues till the eggs 

 are ready for laying, when the abdomen is about the size 



