DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 79 



of sloth, should seem to have regarded them with feelings 

 much more complacent than those of Dr. Clarke and his 

 friends, when their hopes of passing " one night free from the 

 attacks of vermin " were changed into despair by the inform- 

 ation of the laughing Sheik, that " the king of the fleas held 

 his court at Tiberias : " or than those of MM. Lewis and 

 Clarke, who found them more tormenting than all the other 

 plagues of the Missouri country, where they sometimes com- 

 pel even the natives to shift their quarters. If you unhap- 

 pily view them in this unfavourable light, and have found 

 ordinary methods unavailing for ridding yourself of these un- 

 bidden guests, I can furnish you with a probatum est recipe, 

 which the first-mentioned traveller tells us the Hungarian 

 shepherds (who seem to have been stupidly insensible to 

 their value as alarums) find completely effectual to put to 

 flight these insects and their neighbours the lice. This is 

 not, as you may be tempted to think, by a remarkable atten- 

 tion to cleanliness. — Quite the reverse. — They grease their 

 linen with hog's lard, and thus render themselves disgusting 

 even to fleas ! If this does not satisfy, I have another recipe 

 in store for you. You may shoot at them with a cannon, as 

 report says did Christina queen of Sweden, whose piece of 

 artillery, of Lilliputian caliber, which was employed in this 

 warfare, is still exhibited in the arsenal of Stockholm.^ But, 

 seriously, if you wish for an effectual remedy, that prescribed 

 by old Tusser, in the following lines, will answer your pur- 

 pose : — 



« While wormwood hath seed, get a handful! or twaine, 

 To save against March, to make flea to refraine : 

 Where chamber is sweeped, and wormwood is strown, 

 No flea for his life dare abide to be known." 



To this family belongs an insect, abundant in the West 

 Indies and South America, the attacks of which are infinitely 

 more serious than those of the common flea. You will 

 readily conjecture that I am speaking of the celebrated Chigoe 

 OY Jiggers, called also Nigua, Tungua, and Pique'^ (Pulex \_SaT- 



1 Linn. Lack. Lapp. ii. 32. note *. 



2 I,atreille after De Geer (vii. 153.) supposes the Tique and Nigua of Ulloa 

 to be synonymous with Ixodes americanus, L. Hist. Nat. vii. 364. ; but it is evi- 

 dent from Ulloa's descriptions ( Fby. i. 63. Engl. Trans.) that they are syno- 

 nymous with the Chigoe, or Pulex penetrans. 



