336 OUR HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



method proposed being to put a clean stocking on the 

 child's leg and to enclose two or three female lice in it, 

 then to tie the stocking tight at the garter, and keep it 

 in this condition without change for a week, and then 

 to examine it and see to what extent multiplication had 

 taken place. This method of conducting the experiment, 

 however, seemed likely to be too uncertain and too little 

 under his own control ; not that he expected to find any 

 difficulty in securing the services of a suitable host, but 

 because interference with the progress of the experiment 

 would ^>e left so much in the child's power. On further 

 consideration, therefore, he resolved to overcome his re- 

 pugnance, and try the experiment on his own person, at 

 the expense, as he observes, "of enduring for a short 

 time in one leg what most poor people are obliged to 

 suffer in their whole bodies during all their lives." 



He therefore selected a fine black stocking, so that 

 the insects might the more easily be seen, and enclosed 

 in it two large female specimens, fastening the stocking 

 tightly above the knee. After leaving it thus undis- 

 turbed for six days, he took it off and found one insect 

 in the place where he had put it, and around it fifty 

 eggs, and in another part of the stocking forty others, 

 apparently laid by the other specimen, which, however, 

 had escaped. Opening the body of the parent of fifty, 

 he counted in it about fifty more, and as he adds, " who 

 knows how many eggs it had laid before I put it in 

 the stocking, and how many more it might then have 

 in its body which my sight could not reach ? " Having 

 worn the stocking for another ten days, he found in 

 it about twenty-five crawling creatures of different sizes, 

 the largest being apparently some three days old; but 

 the sight of such a progeny caused even his endurance 

 to reach its limit, and he was so disgusted that he 



