"The police is very kind to us, and don't interfere with us. If they see another boy hitting us they'll take off their belts and hit 'em. Sometimes I've sold a ketch-'em-alive to a policeman; he'll fold it up and put it into his pocket to take home with him. Perhaps he's got a kid, and the flies teazes its eyes.
"Some ladies like to buy fly-cages better than ketch-'em-alive's, because sometimes when they're putting 'em up they falls in their faces, and then they screams."
The history of the manufacture of Fly-papers was thus given to Mr. Mayhew by a manufacturer, whom he found in a small attic-room near Drury-lane: "The first man as was the inventor of these fly-papers kept a barber's shop in St. Andrew-street, Seven Dials, of the name of Greenwood or Greenfinch, I forget which. I expect he diskivered it by accident, using varnish and stuff, for stale varnish has nearly the same effect as our composition. He made 'em and sold 'em at first at threepence and fourpence a piece. Then it got down to a penny. He sold the receipt to some other parties, and then it got out through their having to employ men to help 'em. I worked for a party as made 'em, and then I set to work making 'em for myself, and afterwards hawking them. They was a greater novelty then than they are now, and sold pretty well. Then men in the streets, who had nothing to do, used to ask me where I bought 'em, and then I used to give 'em my own address, and they'd come and find me."
Oestridae — Bot-flies
The larvae of Bots, Oestrus ovis, found in the heads of sheep and goats, have been prescribed, and that, from the tripod of Delphos, as a remedy for the epilepsy. We are told so on the authority of Alexander Trallien; but whether Democritus, who consulted the oracle, was cured by this remedy, does not appear; the story shows, however, that the ancients were aware that these maggots made their way even into the brain of living animals. The oracle answered Democritus as follows:
Take a tame goat that hath the greatest head, Or else a wilde goat in the field that's bred, And in his forehead a great worm you'll finde, This cures all diseases of that kinde.
The common saying that a whimsical person is maggoty, or has got maggots in his head, perhaps arose from the freaks the sheep have been observed to exhibit when infested by their Bots.
The following "charme for the Bots in a horse" is found in Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft, printed in 1651: "You must both say and do thus upon the diseased horse three days together, before the sun rising: In nomine patris & filii & spiritus sancti, Exorcizo te vermen per Deum patrem & filium & spiritum sanctum: that is, In the name of God the father, the sonne, and the Holy Ghost, I conjure thee worm by God, the Father, the sonne, and the Holy Ghost; that thou neither eate nor drink the flesh, blood, or bones of this horse; and that thou hereby maiest be made as patient as Job, and as good as S. John Baptist, when he baptized Christ in Jordan, In nomine patris & filii et spiritus sancti. And then say three Pater nosters, and three Aves, in the right eare of the horse, to the glory of the holy trinity. Dominus filius spiritus Maria."
There is a popular error in England respecting the Oestrus (Gasterophilus) equi (haemorrhoidalis), which Shakspeare has followed, and which has been judiciously explained by Mr. Clark. Shakspeare makes the carrier at Rochester observe: "Peas and oats are as dank here as a dog, and that's the next way to give poor jades the bots."
The larvae of this insect, says Mr. Clark, are mostly known among the country people by the name of wormals, wornuls, warbles, or, more properly, Bots. And our ancestors erroneously imagined that poverty or improper food engendered them in horses. The truth, however, seems to be, that when the animal is kept without food the Bots are also, and are then, without doubt, most troublesome; whence it was very naturally supposed that poverty or bad food was the parent of them.
A cow with its hide perforated by Warbles, in England, was said to be elf-shot: the holes being made by the arrows of the little malignant fairies. In the Northern Antiquities, p. 404, we find the following:
"If at such a time you were to look through an elf-bore in wood, where a thorter knot has been taken out, or through the hole made by an elf-arrow (which has probably been made by a Warble) in the skin of a beast that has been elf-shot, you may see the elf-bull naiging (butting) with the strongest bull or ox in the herd; but you will never see with that eye again."
In the Scottish history of the trials of witches, we find the following: Alexander Smaill offended Jonet Cock, who threatened him, "deare sail yow rewe it! and within half ane howre therafter, going to the plough, — befoir he had gone one about, their came ane great Wasp or Bee, so that the foir horses did runne away with the plough, and wer liklie to have killed themselves, and the said Alexander and the boy that was with him, narrowlie escaped with their lyves." Possibly the incident is not exaggerated, as a single Oestrus will turn the oxen of a whole herd, and render them furious.
Spencer, in his Travels in Circassia, speaks of a poisonous Fly, known in Hungary under the name of the Golubatz-fly, which is singularly destructive to cattle. The Hungarian peasants, to account for the severity of the bite of this insect, tell us that in the caverns, near the Castle of Golubatz, the renowned champion, St. George, killed the dragon, and that its decomposed remains have continued to generate these insects down to the present day. So firmly did they believe this, that they closed up the mouths of the caverns with stone walls.
ORDER X. — APHANIPTERA
Pulicidae — Fleas
The name Pulex, given to the Flea by the Romans, is stated by Isidorus to have been derived from pulvis, dust, quasi pulveris filius. Our English name Flea, and the German Floh, are evidently deduced from the quick motions of this insect.
As to the origin of Fleas, Moufet had a similar notion to that contained in the word Pulex, if we adopt the etymology of Isidorus, for he says they are produced from the dust, especially when moistened with urine, the smallest ones springing from putrid matter. Scaliger relates that they are produced from the moistened humors among the hairs of dogs. Conformable to the curious notion of Moufet, Shakspeare says:
2 Car. I think this be the most villainous house in all London road for fleas: I am stung like a tench. 1 Car. Like a tench? by the mass, there is ne'er a king in Christendom could be better bit than I have been since the first cock. 2 Car. Why, they will allow us ne'er a jorden, and then we leak in your chimney; and your chamber-ley breeds fleas like a loach.
"Martyr, the author of the Decads of Navigation, writes, that in Perienna, a countrey of the Indies, the drops of sweat that fall from their slaves' bodies will presently turn to Fleas."
Ewlin, in his book of Travels in Turkey, has recorded a singular tradition of the history of the Flea and its confraternity, as preserved among a sect of Kurds, who dwelt in his time at the foot of Mount Sindshar. "When Noah's Ark," says the legend, "sprung a leak by striking against a rock in the vicinity of Mount Sindshar, and Noah despaired altogether of safety, the serpent promised to help him out of his mishap if he would engage to feed him upon human flesh after the deluge had subsided. Noah pledged himself to do so; and the serpent coiling himself up, drove his body into the fracture and stopped the leak. When the pluvious element was appeased, and all were making their way out of the ark, the serpent insisted upon the fulfillment of the pledge he had received; but Noah, by Gabriel's advice, committed the pledge to the flames, and scattering its ashes in the air, there arose out of them Fleas, Flies, Lice, Bugs, and all such sort of vermin as prey upon human blood, and after this fashion was Noah's pledge redeemed."
The Sandwich Islanders have the following tradition in regard to the introduction of Fleas into their country: Many years ago a woman from Waimea went out to a ship to see her lover, and as she was about to return, he gave her a bottle, saying that there was very little valuable property (waiwai) contained in it, but that she must not open it, on any account, until she reached the shore. As soon as she gained the beach, she eagerly uncorked the bottle to examine her treasure, but nothing was to be discovered, — the Fleas hopped out, and "they have gone on hopping and biting ever since."
Our pigmy tormentor, Pulex irritans, in the opinion of some, seems to have been regarded as an agreeable rather than a repulsive object. "Dear Miss," said a lively old lady to a friend of Kirby and Spence (who had the misfortune to be confined to her bed by a broken limb, and was complaining that the Fleas tormented her), "don't you like Fleas? Well, I think they are the prettiest little merry things in the world. — I never saw a dull Flea in all my life." Dr. Townson, as mentioned by the above writers, from the encomium which he bestows upon these vigilant little vaulters, as supplying the place of an alarum and driving us from the bed of sloth, should seem to have regarded them with the same happy feelings.
When Ray and Willughby were traveling, they found "at Venice and Augsburg Fleas for sale, and at a small price too, decorated with steel or silver collars around their necks, of which Willughby purchased one. When they are kept in a box amongst wool or cloth, in a warm place, and fed once a day, they will live a long time. When they begin to suck they erect themselves almost perpendicularly, thrusting their sucker, which originates in the middle of the forehead, into the skin. The itching is not felt immediately, but a little afterwards. As soon as they are full of blood, they begin to void a portion of it, and thus, if permitted, they will continue for many hours sucking and voiding. After the first itching no uneasiness is subsequently felt. Willughby's Flea lived for three months by sucking in this manner the blood of his hand; it was at length killed by the cold of winter."
We read in Purchas's Pilgrims that a city of the Miantines is said to have been dispeopled by Fleas; and Messrs. Lewis and Clarke, who found these insects more tormenting than all the other plagues of the Missouri country, say they sometimes here compel even the natives to shift their quarters.
Dr. Clarke was informed by an Arab Sheikh that "the king of the Fleas held his court at Tiberias."
To prevent Fleas from breeding, Pliny gives the following curious recipe: "Since I have made mention of the cuckow," says this writer, "there comes into my mind a strange and miraculous matter that the said magicians report of this bird; namely, that if a man, the first time that he heareth her to sing, presently stay his right foot in the very place where it was when he heard her, and withal mark out the point and just proportion of the said foot upon the ground as it stood, and then digg up the earth under it within the said compasse, look what chamber or roume of the house is strewed with the said mould, there will no Fleas bread there."