‘This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings’[5] is destroyed.
CHAPTER III
THE FLEA (Pulex irritans)
Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that which thou denyst me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee.
(Dr. Donne.)
The fact, now fully established, that the bubonic plague is conveyed to man from infected rats, or from infected men to healthy men, by fleas has taken that wingless insect out of the category of those animals which it is indelicate to discuss.
No doubt, as Mr. Dombey says, ‘Nature is on the whole a very respectable institution’; but there are times when she presents herself in a form not to be talked about, and until a few years ago the flea was such a form. Hence, few but specialists have any clear idea either of the structure or of the life-history or of the habits—save one—of the flea.