Flea

“ Then followed a struggle no flea can describe—sighs of blissful and ravishing sensations escape his open slobbering lips, he pushes, he bends forward, his eyes turn up, his mouth opens, and, unable to prevent the rapid completion of his lustful pleasures, the strong man gasps out his soul, and with it a torrent of seminal fluid, which thrown well forward squirts into the womb of his own child. ”

“ Why should a brave man tremble before a nice clean shining flea? You are not afraid of twelve-inch shells or railroad trains or torpedoes—what, then, is a flea? Of course by “a flea” I mean fleas generically. I’ve done my best for you—but the long and the short of it is that if you go anywhere outside of the Grand Hotel you must stand fleas—piles, multitudes, mountains and mountain-ranges of fleas! There! Fleas are a necessary part of human existence.
The iceman offers you a room breezy, cool,—you eat with me; but by all the gods! you’ve got to make the acquaintance of some fleas! ”

“ The fleas are everywhere, and attack you at all points, and travel over you until you feel like tearing your hair in utter desperation. And yet we have been told by some that they have not seen a flea. ”

“ But even a flea might have blushed at the wanton sight which thrust itself upon his vision on the occasion I have herein recorded. So young, so apparently innocent a girl, and yet so lewd, so lascivious in her inclinations and desires. A person of infinite freshness and beauty—a mind of flaming sensuality fanned by the accidental course of events into an active volcano of lust. ”

“ We all know that the Flea is so flat, or compressed sideways, that it does not mind the most severe squeeze. This condition is almost peculiar to it; a great flattening of the body is common in Insects—as is seen in another annoying Insect, the bed-bug—but the compression, in the flea, is in the reverse direction. In other respects the external anatomy of the flea shows several peculiarities, the morphological import of which has not yet been elucidated. ”

“ Evolution took that conceit out of us; and now, though we may kill a flea without the smallest remorse, we at all events know that we are killing our cousin. No doubt it shocks the flea when the creature that an almighty Celestial Flea created expressly for the food of fleas, destroys the jumping lord of creation with his sharp and enormous thumbnail ”

“ Flea, flē, n. a well-known wingless insect of great agility, ectoparasitic on warm-blooded animals.—ns. Flea′-bane, a genus of plants which emit a strong smell said to have the power of driving away fleas ”

“ If the ordinary mode of progression of the flea were, like that of the grasshopper, by a succession of springs, the prodigious size of his hind legs would be accountable; but, upon the contrary, the flea is essentially a runner, and the speed with which he can make his way through the thick fur of a cat or the hair of a dog is wonderful. It does not appear, indeed, that he ever does take to jumping except when inclined to drive human beings on the search for him into a state of frenzy. ”

“ These fleas, parasitical on so minute a mammal, are themselves minute—pretty sherry-coloured little creatures, not half so big as the dog's flea. It appears to be a habit of some wild fleas, when the animal they live on dies and grows cold, to place themselves on the surface of the fur and to hop well away when shaken. ”

“ As a rule the males are more bristly than the females.
These appendages of the flea’s integument are called by various writers either spines, bristles, or hairs. There is, however, no real distinction in the structure or nature of the appendages, and it is a question of degree which name is most appropriate.
In distinguishing species, very little reliance can be placed on the colour of the flea. An insect newly emerged from the pupa is always lighter in colour; and the difference between the appearance of an empty stomach and a stomach gorged with red blood is surprising. ”

“ With eager hand he firmly seizes her swelling hip, and pulling her towards him, opens her white legs and plants himself between.
Reader, I have already remarked I am only a flea. Yet fleas have feelings, and what mine were I will not attempt to describe when I beheld that excited member brought close to the pouting lips of Julia's moist slit. I closed my eyes; the sexual instincts of the male flea rose within me, and I longed—yes! how ardently I longed to be in Mr. Delmont's place. ”

“ During the time occupied in compleating the drawing, the Flea told him that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of such men as were by nature blood-thirsty to excess, and were therefore providentially confined to the size and form of insects ”

“ THE FLEA. WHILE great pains are devoted to the breeding of horses, cattle, and sheep among animals, to that of several kinds of birds, and to the propagation of fish, the flea has been left to shift for itself, and has managed to thrive. Whether the flea was, in the first place, an inhabitant of all terrestrial portions of the globe, or whether, starting from a common centre, it speedily spread itself over the earth, is a point which has not been decided; but the habits of the flea admirably fit him as a traveller ”

“ The clasping organs of the male flea are portions of the ninth segment and form together a kind of claw reminding one of the pinchers of a lobster. It is used by the male flea in the breeding season to detain and hold the female. ”

“ So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet, in his kind, Is bit by him that comes behind: Who, though too little to be seen, Can teaze, and gall, and give the spleen; ”

“ You will thus perceive that I am not common flea; indeed, when it is born in mind the company in which I have been accustomed to mingle, the familiarity with which I have been suffered to treat persons the most exalted, and the opportunities I have possessed to make the most of my acquaintances, the reader will no doubt agree with me that I am in very truth a most wonderful and exalted insect. ”

“ One may attribute some of the extraordinary strength and vital energy of a flea to the fact that, by the blood-system and the air-system, the tissues of the body are kept richly supplied with oxygen. The blood of a flea is a thin fluid and, of course, without red corpuscles. The blood that is shed when a flea is crushed comes from the stomach and not from the blood-vessels of the insect. ”

“ Fleas form a group of insects that have, until recently, been little studied by zoologists. We call them insects because they are jointed animals, or Arthropods, with three pairs of legs in the adult condition. The reader will best understand the position which fleas occupy in the general classification of animals by remembering that the arthropods, or jointed animals, are one of a dozen subkingdoms, or phyla, to which the various members of the great animal kingdom have been assigned. ”

“ Man and beast suffer equally from them, as is implied in the words of Scripture, and, unless they are very cautiously removed, painful and obstinate is the result of their bites.
THE FLEA. Prevalence of the Flea in the East, and the annoyance caused by them to travellers—Fleas of the Lebanon—The Bey's bedfellows—The Pasha at the bath—Use of the word in Scripture.
This active little pest absolutely swarms in the East. The inhabitants are so used to the Fleas that either the insects do not touch them, or by long custom they become so inured to their attack that the bites are not felt. ”

“ One of the first lessons taught the flea, is to control its jumping powers, for if its great leaps should be taken in the middle of a performance, there would be a sudden ending to the circus. To insure against such a misfortune, the student flea is first placed in a glass phial, and encouraged to jump as much as possible. Every leap here made brings the polished head of the flea against the glass, hurling the insect back, and throwing it this way and that, until, after a long and sorry experience, and perhaps many head-aches, it makes up its mind never to unfold its legs suddenly again. ”

“ Slint (taking no notice) . Now the nature of the flea is to ’op; it is not the nature of the flea to walk. I ’ave trained the fleas to walk. I will now show you the flea as newly captured. Being still untrained, ’e still ’ops, you see.
He produces a miniature kennel, to which is attached “by a ’uman ’air” an undeniable flea. The flea hops gallantly, but is clearly impeded from doing its best jumps by the human hair. ”

“ The jumps which fleas are able to make are really gigantic, and the strength of these little animals quite herculean, when compared with the size of their bodies. The reader may be inclined to smile at the assertion that the flea possesses herculean strength ”

“ You know what the flea is—or if you do not know it is all the better, for the flea's way of making itself known is by biting. Yet even these small pests have been taught to do things, such as being harnessed to little carriages, which they drag about in a way to please those who are near enough to see them.
A strong little insect is the flea. It can leap, we are told, two hundred times its length, while few of us can jump twice our length. And it can pull a heavy weight for a creature of its size. ”

“ There’s one of ’em on you now!”
§ 233 One Old Enough to Merit Respect I venture to present here and now the famous and deservedly immortal tale of the Educated Flea. At a theatrical hotel a vaudeville performer was stopping. He was the owner of a troupe of performing fleas. One evening, at dinner, he was telling his fellow-lodgers how he went about the job of training his tiny pets. To demonstrate, he cleared a space on the table, took one of his fleas, an especially intelligent and gifted insect, out of a small box, and proceeded to put the lively little chap through his paces. ”

“ Flea-bites go down after a while—and so do they. What are they but the bumps which we human fleas make in the old earth's skin?. Make them? We only cause them, as fleas cause flea-bites . . . . What are all the works of man, but a sort of cutaneous disorder in this unhealthy earth-hide, and we a race of larger fleas, running about among its fur, which we call trees? Why should not the earth be an animal? ”

“ Some fleas have what may be called by comparison large heads and others very small ones.
A small head is never found in a flea with powerful mouth-parts. The head being the bearer of piercing and sucking organs, which require strong muscles, there must be room not only for the organs but for their extensors and retractors.
There are normally three rows of bristles on a flea’s head which divide the head into four sections. It is possible that these correspond to the four segments of the ancestral insect which are now fused together. ”

“ But the human flea is sometimes found on cats and dogs, and cat and dog-fleas occasionally bite human beings; and cat-fleas are found on dogs and dog-fleas are found on cats. All fleas, so far as we know, may occasionally pass from one species of host to another; but they do not, for the most part, seem to flourish in unaccustomed quarters. Some fleas are more catholic in their tastes than others. Some seem to be very strictly confined to one host, and even when starving only suck strange blood under protest. ”

“ The structure of an adult flea, however, differs from that of an adult fly in the following noteworthy respects: the mouth-parts are differently constructed, the head of the flea is closely joined to its thorax, the three divisions of the thorax are not joined and fused, the flea is wingless, the eyes of fleas are simple ocelli, and there are differences of lesser importance in the stigmata, which give access to the tracheal system by which all insects breathe. ”

“ Before either could reply to the observation, a succession of cries made themselves heard in the quiet chamber, and becoming weaker and weaker as they continued, at once arrested the attention of all present.
And here I should acquaint my reader with one or two particulars which hitherto, in my crawling capacity. I have not thought it necessary to mention. The fact is that fleas, although no doubt agile members of society, cannot be everywhere at once, though no doubt they can, and do make up for this drawback by the exercise of an agility rarely equalled by others of the insect tribe. ”

“ The connection between the flea and the mammal it feeds on is even less close than that which exists between the Ornithomyia and bird. The fact that fleas are so common and universal--for in all lands we have them, like the poor, always with us; and that they are found on all mammals, from the king of beasts to the small modest mouse--seems to show a great amount of variability and adaptiveness, as well as a very high antiquity. It has often been reported that fleas have been found hopping on the ground in desert places, where they could not have been dropped by man or beast ”

“ Mark you, gentlemen, this is not the flea of the dog or the cat, but the human flea, for each differ in their formation, as clearly proved by this powerful instrument. For they all differ in their form and shape, and will only feed upon the animal on which they are bred. Having shown you the head and shoulders, with its dart, I shall now proceed to show you the posterior view of this object, in which you may clearly discover every artery, vein, muscle and nerve, exact like a lobster in shape, and quite as large as one at 2s. ”