LICE. 395 



CASE any very good specific characters. It is the larger and broader 

 of the two. It is greyer and more uniform in colour, wants the 

 spine at the top of the thumb, and has few or no projections on 

 the inner side of the penultimate joint, characters which accord 

 with its less scansorial mode of life, which requires less powerful 

 appliances for seizing and tenaciously retaining hold of the hairs 

 through which it passes. The concurrent opinion of those who 

 are practically familiar with the animals and their habits also con- 

 firms the view that they are distinct species. We remember the 

 remark of a young private soldier on his return, wounded, from 

 the Crimea, who, in speaking of the sufferings of the troops before 

 Sebastopol, dwelt upon the annoyance experienced from these 

 parasites ; and in reply to some suggestion as to the specific 

 virtues of a small-toothed comb, which was understood to form 

 part of a soldier's necessaries, answered, "Oh! we did not mind 

 the head ones; it was the body ones," — thus implying a clear 

 and well recognised distinction between the two in power of 

 annoyance. The remark of "a certain great personage" quoted 

 by Leewenhoek as made to him when he exhibited to him this 

 creature under the microscope, to the effect that his soldiers^ 

 who were infested with lice, found them more troublesome in 

 rainy than in dry weather, also obviously applies to the body 

 species. 



They are exceedingly prolific. Leewenhoek ascertained the 

 rate of multiplication by actual experiment. He disbelieved the 

 vulgar saying that a louse might be a grandfather in twenty-four 

 hours, and the mode in which he settled the question was this : 

 He at first proposed to hire some poor child to wear a clean 

 stocking for a week with two or three female lice in it, well tied 

 or secured at the garter, in order to see how many young ones 

 would be produced in that space of time ; but he afterwards 

 considered that he could make the experiment with much more 

 certainty on his own person, at the expense only of enduring in 

 one leg for a week or two what many people are obliged to suffer 



