ANOPLURORUM BRITANNIA. 21 



This I could never believe to be the fact, but rather that it 

 would require nearly a month, for the offspring of a louse to 

 be capable of producing young of its kind ; and in order to 

 make proof of it by experiment, 1 at first proposed to 

 hire some poor child to wear a clean stocking for a week, 

 with two or three female lice in it, and well tied or secured 

 at the garter, in order to see how many young ones would be 

 produced in that space of time, but I afterwards considered 

 that I could make the experiment with much more cer- 

 tainty in my own person, at the expense only of enduring 

 in one leg, what most poor people are obliged to suffer in 

 their whole bodies, during all their lives. Hereupon I put 

 on one leg, instead of a white under stocking I usually wear, 

 a fine black stocking, choosing that colour, because I con- 

 sidered that the eggs, and the young lice thence proceeding, 

 would be more easily distinguished upon it. Into this 

 stocking I put two large female lice, and cutting another 

 black stocking into long slips, I bound it over the first above 

 the knee, to prevent their escaping ; after wearing this 

 stocking six days I took it off, and found one of the lice had 

 laid fifty eggs, and the other about forty. 1 opened the 

 one which had laid the fifty eggs, and found in its body at 

 least fifty more, and who knows how many eggs it had laid 

 before I put it into the stocking, and how many more eggs 

 it might then have in its body which my sight could not 

 reach. Having worn the stocking ten days longer, I found 

 in it at least 25 lice of three different sizes, some of which 

 I judged were two days old, others a day old, and the rest 

 newly come out of the egg. To give a clearer conception 

 of the great increase of these animals, let us suppose a 

 person to have about his body two male lice and as many 

 females, and that the females in 12 days time lay 200 eggs ; 

 and that six days afterwards out of these eggs are produced 



