38 



Insects and Disease 



and chickens, various other manges of the horses 

 and cattle and dogs, etc. But we need to call atten- 

 tion to just one more example, that of the harvest- 

 mites or jiggers (Fig. 21). Professor Otto Lugger, 

 from whose report on the Parasites of Man and 

 Domestic Animals most of these notes in regard to 

 the mites are taken, thus feelingly refers to this pest. 



" About the very worst pests of man and domesti- 

 cated animals are the Harvest-bugs, Red-bugs or Jig- 

 gers. . . . Men and animals passing through low herb- 

 age that harbors them are attacked by these pests, which, 

 whenever they succeed in finding a host, burrow in and 

 under the skin, causing intolerable itching and sores, the 

 latter caused by the feverish activity of the finger-nails 

 of the host, if that should be a man, whose energy in 

 scratching, apparently, cannot be controlled and who is 

 bound forcibly to remove the intruders. The writer 

 has been there ! Those who have ever passed through 

 meadows infested with red-bugs will remember the oc- 

 casion." 



Horses, cattle, dogs and cats and other animals 

 suffer also. Again sulphur ointments are the best 

 remedies. 



"The normal food of these mites must, apparently, 

 consist of the juices of plants, and the love of blood 

 proves ruinous to those individuals which get a chance 



