ms “ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 225 
2 by the Portuguese from South America. Since then 
trsed the continent and is steadily pursuing its way 
SENET Givinw alregdy betn carried by coolics from 
i Africa to the Far East. S. penetrans in Angola lives in 
MS Ya ors cece Krnsie, conve, oc It 
bite all warm-blooded animals, including man, in the same 
Manner as do ordinary fleas; but if a @ be impregnated, she 
tak ntage of her first chance to burrow into the tissues 
ot ‘some warm-blooded animal (often man) thereby occa- 
ray y causing tetanus, sepsis, gangrene, mutilation and (rare- 
i ) death of her host. Once ensconced, she matures her eggs, 
er abdomen, which admits of enormous distension, swelling 
the process to the size of a sweet pea. There have ap- 
i various accounts of the succeeding steps in the meta- 
phosis, many of them inaccurate. In books on zoology, 
i zy and medicine we read, for instance, such statements 
tiene, The eggs are “not deposited while the parasite is 
n the skin, for the ova do not leave the body until the parent 
we 
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reaches the so “The female bores into the skin, and the 
escaping _ escaping larvae give rise to ulcers.” “The female lays her 
x ew in the skin and causes thereby intense inflammation.” 
“After the eggs SS otdtide (according to some before this pro- 
ee cess) the SAE Tila  cicaratee and the chigger is ex- 
| pelled,” etc., etc. During the examination of large numbers 
1 2 natives in Angola, I have made the following observations, 
3 in another periodical,* concerning this dis- 
pated stage in the life history : 
F 1. The eggs are always laid while the chigger is yet imbed- 
it ded in the flesh of her host.t 
4 2. They never hatch into larvae in the body of the parent. 
3. They are not laid at one time in masses,} but discretely 
and sometimes at considerable intervals. 
*American Jour. Sed, Sclances, May, os 
4 tWhen artificially removed from the tissues of her host she behaves 
abnormally and extrudes all her eggs at once, but this does not form a 
> real exception to the above statements, and only a few of the most 
mature eggs thus expelled will hatch out. 
m5 
