8 STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 



clothing sent to the Quick Laboratory, very little 

 contained live vermin. The newly-hatched larvae 

 perish in a day and a half unless they can obtain 

 food. These facts regarding the life-history of 

 body-lice were fully confirmed by Dr. Fantham 

 when working on the protozoal parasites of lice. 

 With regard to the head-louse : 



" Ye ugly, creepin', blastit wonner, 

 Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner," 



it is smaller than the body-louse, and is of a 

 cindery-grey colour. The female measures 

 1-8 mm. in length and 0-7 mm. in breadth. Like 

 the body-louse, it varies its colour somewhat 

 with the colour of the hair on the different branches 

 of the human race. It lives amongst the hair 

 of the head of people who neglect their heads ; 

 it is also, but more rarely, found amongst the 

 eyelashes and in the beard. The egg, which has 

 a certain beauty of symmetry, is cemented to 

 the hair, and at the end of six days the larvae 

 emerge, which, after a certain number of moults, 

 become mature on the eighteenth day. The 

 methods adopted by many natives of plastering 

 their hair with coloured clay, or of anointing it 

 with ointments, probably guards against the pre- 

 sence of these parasites. The Spartan youths, 



