BOOK NOTICE 
Fleas of Western North America. Their Relation to 
the Public Health; by Clarence Andresen Hubbard; pp. 
i-ix + 1-533, 5 half-tone plates, and many text figures. 
1947. (The Iowa State College Press, Ames, Iowa. 
$ 6 . 00 ). 
This companion volume to Irving Fox’ “ Fleas of East- 
ern United States,” from the same Press (1940), far out- 
strips in scope any similar attempt in the field of the 
Sipbonaptera. It is a handsome book, clearly printed 
and attractively bound. 
The work opens with a history of the study of fleas in 
western North America, a feature to which entomologists 
are little accustomed. In a brief but competent discus- 
sion of fleas and disease it is stated that, since the intro- 
duction of bubonic plague in the United States in 1900, 
there have been 506 human cases, 321 of them fatal. It 
is to be feared, nevertheless, that the author’s “Word of 
Warning” will fall upon deaf ears. Collecting ectopara- 
sites is not a normal activity of the average entomologist. 
Hubbard describes in detail the special techniques in- 
volved in trapping the hosts, gathering the fleas, and 
mounting the specimens for study. 
The chapter on the external anatomy of the flea is dis- 
appointing. For advanced students it could have been 
omitted altogether ; while it is far too sketchy to meet the 
beginner’s needs. Even some terms used in the main 
body of the book — such as pygidium, mesosternite and 
mesopleurite — are not explained. 
The foregoing general topics cover a bare 40 pages, the 
bulk of the treatise being a detailed taxonomic study of 
236 species and subspecies of Siphonaptera known to the 
author from North America west of the 100th Meridian. 
These he classifies in 5 families and 66 genera. Keys are 
provided for the identification of families and genera, 
and for the species and subspecies of most genera, with 
the exception of Ceratophyllus and Megarthroglossus. 
However, some of the keys to species are based on males 
only. Type locality and type host are given for nearly 
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