216 PULICIAN POWER. 



that stupendous load to ten links of gold chain, and on 

 growing yet weaker, the venerable prisoner was released even 

 from this splendid misery ; but then, alas ! its leaps, from 

 two hundred times the length of its own body, could not 

 clear an inch, and at last it could scarcely crawl across its 

 prison. 



"We all owe our consequence to some sort of power ; and 

 to the power of its muscles is the flea indebted for the best 

 part of its celebrity. The extraordinary amount of muscular 

 force, as displayed in its stupendous leaps, attracted very early 

 the curious and observant ; and Socrates measuring the leap 

 of a flea, figures in the ' Clouds ' of the satirical Aristophanes. 

 And, in sooth, our agile little vaulter can take a leap worth 

 measuring, for in reaching to the distance of two hundred 

 times its own length, it is, in proportion to its size, as if a 

 man should leap from three to four hundred yards. 



This marvellous power must have first put it into the head 

 of some ingenious person to display both his own mechanic 

 skill and the flea's strength, by turning the latter into a little 

 draught animal, in which capacity it has been proved capable 

 of drawing three hundred and sixty times its own weight. 

 Mouffet, writing in the reign of Elizabeth, mentions an Eng- 

 lish mechanic named Mark, who constructed a chain of gold 

 as long as his finger, which with lock and key were dragged 

 along by a single flea ; and by a similar piece of vulcanic work- 

 manship did another acquire proverbial repute as 



