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Biology of Pediculus lmmanus 
to dug-outs as centres of infestation. Peacock (1916, pp. 48-54), who 
has had a'large practical experience of the louse problem at the western 
front, considers that dug-outs per se are wrongly blamed, for, although 
the men constantly assert that “the dug-outs are lousy” he failed to 
find lice there. The dug-outs that hold the most men have the worst 
reputation. He found that soldiers in open trenches, where they could 
not change clothes, and men in dug-outs, where they huddled together, 
were infested to an equal degree. Peacock does not believe that infested 
blankets play an important part in disseminating lice, for in a regiment 
with an average of 31-4 lice per man, the average per blanket was only 
0-8 lice; many blankets contained no lice, others 20-60 or more apiece; 
in the latter case, however, the men were very unclean. In short, if I 
properly seize the author’s meaning, the chief cause of dissemination 
does not lie in dug-outs and blankets, but in the men themselves and 
their huddling together, especially when one or more are infested, as I 
have previously indicated. Jeanneret-Minkine (1915, p. 130) states 
that lice occur in the straw sacks ( paillasses) used by French soldiers, 
the sacks being made of loosely webbed fabric, and, like German 
observers, he rightly denies that lice lay eggs in straw. 
(4) Contact of clean persons’ clothing, blankets, hats, etc., with similar 
articles belonging to infested persons. In the case of capitis, Harding 
(1898, p. 95) in Boston, Mass., points out, that having found lice in 
school-girls’ hats hung beside each other in the racks of school halls, 
he regards it as probable that the lice wander from hat to hat and are 
thus distributed. Experience with the transportation of soldiers’ 
kit-bags in the Boer war, showed that corporis may wander out of bags 
containing infested clothing and that they may stray on to clean 
clothing in adjacent bags. Jeanneret-Minkine (1915, pp. 128, 130) 
describes how he saw Austrian grey-blue uniforms of infested men 
from the trenches, being piled up in a courtyard; after a few minutes 
they were so covered by lice as to appear of a cafe-au-lait colour when 
viewed at a distance of a few yards. He, moreover, saw lice wander 
away in large numbers from infested clothing placed on the floor; the 
lice migrated toward the door of a room which had been darkened. 
Peacock (1916, pp. 42-44) has also observed that lice congregate on the 
upper surface of discarded verminous clothing. It is therefore evident 
that clean apparel may become infested by proximity to that which is 
verminous. 
(5) Infestation through stray lice. It is obvious from the foregoing 
that lice may be disseminated by being dropped by infested persons or 
