A REVISION OF THE SARCOPSYLLIDAE 
A FAMILY OF SIPHONAPTERA 
By KARL JORDAN, Ph.D. 
AND 
The Hon. N. CHARLES ROTHSCHILD, M.A., F.L.S. 
OVIEDO, in his Coronica de las Indias, published in 1 551, appears to be the first 
to have noticed the Jigger or Chigoe. This insect, which is a member of the 
family of fleas known as the Sarcopsyllidae, is the first exotic flea ever described. 
Travellers in the tropics of America could scarcely avoid making the acquaintance of this 
well-known pest, which infests both men and quadrupeds. The Chigoe is mentioned in 
several works of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Catesby giving a 
figure of the animal which is easily recognised.* 
Linne, in 1758, described the Chigoe as Pulex penetrans. Apparently he did 
not know the insect except from the figure in Catesby and the descriptions in several 
authors which he quotes. His diagnosis, P. proboscide corporis longitudine, is of course 
erroneous. This species and the human flea were the only ones Linne distinguished 
by a name, though under the title of Pulex irritans he includes a number of different 
species, such as those from the dog, cat, tow], rabbit, etc. 
Westwood, some eighty years later, makes the same error as Linne did in his 
Latin diagnosis which we have quoted above. Some of the pre-Linnean authors — and 
Linne himself in the first editions of his Systema Naturae— considered the Chigoe to 
be a mite, or expressed doubt as to the group into which this insect should be placed. 
Even such a naturalist as Oken held the opinion of Pulex penetrans being a mite, 
though it is only fair to add that his acquaintance with the insect was derived from 
books only. The first author to consider this now well-known insect to be a flea was 
Oviedo himself, Dumeril, Pohl and Kollar, and others following suit. 
Guerin, in 1838 or 39, characterised the Chigoe under a separate generic title, 
Dermatophilus, which name has to be employed instead of Westwood's later one, 
Sarcopsylla. Westwood when proposing his generic title in 1 840, based his description 
upon some female specimens of this insect preserved in alcohol. The male he 
apparently failed to recognise with any degree of certainty, considering Catesby's 
figure to represent rather an unextended female than a male. For some specimens of 
the Sarcopsylla found on a dog, which the natives considered to be different from the 
History of Carolina, &c. II. p. 110. tab. 10. rig. ^ (1745). 
