ORDER XI.
ANOPLEURA.
Pediculidæ—Lice.
At Hurdenburg, in Sweden, Mr. Hurst tells us the mode of choosing a burgomaster is this: The persons eligible sit around, with their beards upon a table; a Louse is then put in the middle of the table, and the one, in whose beard this insect first takes cover, is the magistrate for the ensuing year.[1062]
Respecting the revenue of Montecusuma, which consisted of the natural products of the country, and what was produced by the industry of his subjects, we find the following story in Torquemada: “During the abode of Montecusuma among the Spaniards, in the palace of his father, Alonzo de Ojeda one day espied in a certain apartment of the building a number of small bags tied up. He imagined at first that they were filled with gold dust, but on opening one of them, what was his astonishment to find it quite full of Lice? Ojeda, greatly surprised at the discovery he had made, immediately communicated what he had seen to Cortes, who then asked Marina and Anguilar for some explanation. They informed him that the Mexicans had such a sense of their duty to pay tribute to their monarch, that the poorest and meanest of the inhabitants, if they possessed nothing better to present to their king, daily cleaned their persons, and saved all the Lice they caught, and that when they had a good store of these, they laid them in bags at the feet of their monarch.” Torquemada further remarks, that his reader might think these bags were filled with small worms (gasanillos), and not with Lice; but appeals to Alonzo de
Ojeda, and another of Cortes’ soldiers, named Alonzo de Mata, who were eye-witnesses of the fact.[1063]
Oviedo pretends to have observed that Lice, at the elevation of the tropics, abandon the Spanish sailors that are going to the Indies, and attack them again at the same point on their return. The same is reported in Purchas’s Pilgrims.[1064] One of the supplementary writers to Cuvier’s History of Insects says: “This is an observation that has need of being corroborated by more certain testimonies than we are yet in possession of. But, if true, there would be nothing in the fact very surprising. A degree of considerable heat, and a more abundant perspiration, might prove unfavorable to the propagation of the Pediculi corporis. As their skin is more tender, the influence of the air might prove detrimental to them in those burning climates.”[1065]
We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims, that “if Lice doe much annoy the natives of Cambaia and Malabar, they call to them certain Religious and holy men, after their account: and these Observants y will take upon them all those Lice which the other can find, and put them on their head, there to nourish them. But yet for all this lousie scruple, they stick not to coozenage by falese weights, measures, and coyne, nor at usury and lies.”[1066]
In a side-note to this curious passage, we find: “The like lousie trick is reported in the Legend of S. Francis, and in the life of Ignatius, of one of the Jesuitical pillars, by Moffæus.”
Steedman says of the Caffres, that “except an occasional plunge in a river, they never wash themselves, and consequently their bodies are covered with vermin. On a fine day their karosses are spread out in the sun, and as their tormentors creep forth they are doomed to destruction. It often happens that one Caffir performs for another the kind office of collecting these insects, in which case he preserves the entomological specimens, carefully delivering them to the person
to whom they originally appertained, supposing, according to their theory, that as they derived their support from the blood of the man from whom they were taken, should they be killed by another, the blood of his neighbor would be in his possession, thus placing in his hands the power of some superhuman influence.”[1067]