Butler, in the first canto of the third part of Hudibras, also mentions it thus:
"And stole his talismanic louse—
His flea, his morpion, and punaise."
If the Querist refers to his French dictionary he will soon discover the meaning of morpion and punaise—the latter without doubt the pinece of Bishop Bramhall. Cotgrave, in his French-English Dictionary, London, 1650, defines punaise to be "the noysome and stinking vermin called the bed punie."
It may be bad taste to dwell any longer on this subject; but as it illustrates a curious fact in natural history, and as it has been well said, that whatever the Almighty has thought proper to create is not beneath the study of mankind, I shall crave a word or two more.
The pinece is not originally a native of this country; and that is the reason why, so many years after its first appearance in England, it was known only by a corruption of its French name punaise, or its German appellation wandlaus (wall-louse). Penny, a celebrated physician and naturalist in the reign of Henry VII., discovered it at Mortlake in rather a curious manner. Mouffet, in his Theatrum Insectorum (Lond. 1634), thus relates the story:
"Anno 1503, dum hæc Pennio scriptitaret, Mortlacum Tamesin adjacentem viculum, magna festinatione accersebatur ad duas nobiles, magno metu ex cimicum vestigiis percussas, et quid nescio contagionis valde veritas. Tandem recognita, ac bestiolis captis, risu timorem omnem excussat."
Mouffet also tells us that in his time the insect was little known in England, though very common on the Continent, a circumstance which he ascribes to the superior cleanliness of the English:
"Munditiem frequentemque lectulorum et culcitrarem lotionem, cum Galli, Germani, et Itali minus curant, pariunt magis hane pestem, Angli autem munditei et cultus studiosissimi rarius iis laborant."
Ray, in his Historia Insectorum, published in 1710, merely terms it the punice or wall-louse; indeed, I am not aware that the modern name of the insect appears in print previous to 1730, when one Southal published A Treatise of Buggs. Southal appears to have been an illiterate person; and he erroneously ascribes the introduction of the insect into this country to the large quantities of foreign fir used to rebuild London after the Great Fire.