Willsford, in his Nature’s Secrets, printed 1658, p. 130, says: “The little sable beast (called a Flea), if much thirsting after blood, it argues rain.”[1039]
It is related that the Devil, teasing St. Domingo in the shape of a Flea, skipped upon his book, when the saint
fixed him as a mark where he left off, and continued to use him so through the volume.[1040]
Fleas infesting beds were attributed to the envy of the Devil.[1041]
Giles Fletcher says that Iwan Yasilowich sent to the City of Moscow to provide for him a measure full of Fleas for a medicine. They answered that it was impossible, and if they could get them, yet they could not measure them because of their leaping out. Upon which he set a mulct upon the city of seven thousand rubles.[1042]
We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims that the Jews were not permitted to burn Fleas in the flame of their lamps on Sabbath evenings.[1043]
The muscular power of the Flea is so great that it can leap to the distance of two hundred times its own length, which will appear the more surprising when we consider that a man, were he endowed with equal strength and agility, would be able to leap between three and four hundred yards. Aristophanes, in his usual licentious way, ridicules the great Socrates for his pretended experiments on this great muscular power:
Disciple. That were not lawful to reveal to strangers.
Strepsiades. Speak boldly then as to a fellow-student;
For therefore am I come.