G42 Laura Florence 



HISTORICAL REVIEW 



According to Moufetti (1634, English trans. 1658), the earliest reference 

 to the hog louse is to l^e found in the works of Albertus, a writer of the 

 twelfth century, who named tlie insect Pediculus urius. Moufetti retained 

 this name and described the louse as somewhat larger than that infesting 

 oxen and calves, and so hard that it could not be crushed between the 

 fingers. Linnaeus (1758:2915) described the louse under the name Pedi- 

 culus suis. Panzer (quoted by Stevenson, 1905), in 1798, followed the 

 nomenclature of Linnaeus and stated that in the classification of Fabricius 

 this parasite was placed " with Pediculus asini of Redi (1671)." Leach 

 (1817:65) broke up the genus Pediculus into four genera, Phthirus, 

 Haematopinus, Pediculus, and Nirmus, making the hog louse the type 

 of the new genus Haematopinus. This classification was not immediately 

 accepted, and Nitzsch (1818:305) revived the old name of Albertus. 

 He was followed in this by Burmeister (1839:58), who gave the synonymy 

 and a brief description of the louse, and later (1847:569) gave a detailed 

 description of the structure of the mouth parts. 



Systematic descriptions and figures of the species are to be found in the 

 monographs of Denny (1842:34), Giebel (1874:45), and Piaget (1880: 

 654), of which the last is the most detailed. More recent and popular 

 descriptions are given in three bulletins of the United States Department 

 of Agriculture. Two of these are the work of Osborn (1891 and 1898), 

 and in them the sections on the hog louse are identical. He calls attention 

 to " a curious provision in the feet for strengthening the hold upon the 

 hair, which does not seem to have been hitherto described." The third 

 bulletin, written by Stevenson (1905), is valuable on account of the com- 

 plete synonymy and the extent of the bibliography. 



Between 1903 and 1906 a number of papers relating to the S3^stematic 

 position of the Pediculidae appeared in Europe. ]\Iost authors confined 

 their investigations to the mouth parts, and for a time a bitter controversy 

 was waged Ijetween Cholodkovsky of St. Petersburg and Enderlein of 

 Berhn. Cholodkovsky (1903 : 120 and 1904 : 368) studied numerous sections 

 of the head of the embryo of Pediculus capitis, while Enderlein (1904 and 

 1905), using cleared preparations and gross dissections, studied the hog 

 louse in greatest detail of all the species used. Cholodkovsky's findings 

 in regard to adult lice were confirmed by his pupil, Pawlowsky (1906 : 156), 

 whose paper contains a discussion and criticism of the literature to date. 



