312 PULICID^ — FLEAS. 



The witty Butler has also commemorated the same cir- 

 cumstance in his justly celebrated poem of Iludibras : 



How many scores a Flea will jump 

 Of his own length, from head to rump; 

 \Vliicli Socrates ami ChixjropLon 

 In vain assay'd so long agon. 



As illustrative of the strenp^th of the Flea, the following 

 facts may also be given : We read in a note to Purchas's 

 Pilgrims that "one Marke Scaliot, in London, made a lock 

 and key and chain of forty-three links, all which a Flea did 

 draw, and weighed but a grain and a half."^ Mouffet, who 

 also records this fact, says he had heard of another Flea 

 that was harnessed to a golden chariot, which it drew with 

 the greatest ease.^ Bingley tells us that Mr, Boverick, an 

 ingenious watchmaker in the Strand, exhibited some years 

 ago a little ivory chaise with four wheels, and all its proper 

 apparatus, and the figure of a man sitting on the box, all of 

 which were drawn by a single Flea. The same mechanic 

 afterward constructed a minute landau, which opened and 

 shut by springs, with the figures of six horses harnessed to 

 it, and of a coachman on the box, a dog between his legs, 

 four persons inside, two footmen behind it, and a postillion 

 riding on one of the fore horses, which were all easily 

 dragged along by a single Flea. He likewise had a chain 

 of brass, about two inches long, containing two hundred 

 links, with a hook at one end and a padlock and key at the 

 other, which a Flea drew nimbly along.^ At a fair of 

 Charlton, in Kent, 1830, a man exhibited three Fleas har- 

 nessed to a carriage in form of an omnibus, at least fifty 

 times their own bulk, which they pulled along with great 

 ease; another pair drew a chariot, and a single Flea a 

 brass cannon. The exhibitor showed the whole first through 

 a magnifying glass, and then to the naked eye ; so. that all 



1 Pilg , ii, 840, note. 



2 Ins. Thentr., p. 275. 



3 Anim. Biog., iii. 462. 



The hand-bill, published by Mr. Boverick, in the Strand, in the 

 year 1745, and another nearly of the same date, ran thus: " To be 

 seen at Mr. Boverick's, Watchmaker, at the Dial, facing Old Round 

 Court, near the New Exchange, in the Strand, at One Shilling each 

 person." Then follows a descriptive list of the articles to be seen, 

 among which are mentioned the above, — Kirby's Wonderful Mu- 

 seum, i. 101. 



