PULEX, the FLEA, in zoology, a genus of insects belonging to the order of aptera. It has two eyes, and six feet fitted for leaping; the feelers are like threads; the rostrum is inflected, setaceous, and armed with a ring; and the belly is compressed.
The generation of this familiar vermin affords something very curious, first discovered by Sig. Diacinto Cellere.
Fleas bring forth eggs, or nits, which they deposit on animals that afford them a proper food: these eggs being very round and smooth, usually slip straight down; unless detained by the piles, or other inequalities, of the cloaths, hairs, &c.
Of these eggs are hatched white worms, of a shining pearl colour, which feed on the scurfy substance of the cuticle, the downy matter gathered in the piles of clothes, or other the like substances.
In a fortnight they come to a tolerable size, and are very lively and active; and, if at any time disturbed, they suddenly roll themselves into a kind of ball.
Soon after this, they come to creep, after the manner of silk-worms, with a very swift motion. When arrived at their size, they hide themselves as much as possible, and spin a silken thread out of their mouth, wherewith they form themselves a small round bag, or case, white within as paper, but without always dirty, and fouled with dust. Here, after a fortnight's rest, the animalcule bursts out, transformed into a perfect flea; leaving its exuviae in the bag.
While it remains in the bag, it is milk-white, till the second day before its eruption; when it becomes coloured, grows hard, and gets strength; so that upon its first delivery, it springs nimbly away.
The flea, when examined by the microscope, affords a very pleasing object. It is covered all over with black, hard, and shelly scales or plates, which are curiously jointed, and folded over one another in such a manner, as to comply with all the nimble motions of the creature. These scales are all curiously polished, and are beset about the edges with short spikes in a very beautiful and regular order. Its neck is finely arched, and much resembles the tail of a lobster: the head also is very extraordinary; for from the snout-part of it there proceed the two fore-legs, and between these is placed the piercer or sucker with which it penetrates the skin to get its food.
Its eyes are very large and beautiful, and it has two short horns or feelers. It has four other legs joined all at the breast. These, when it leaps, fold short one within another; and then, exerting their spring all at the same instant, they carry the creature to a surprising distance. The legs have several joints, and are very hairy, and terminate in two long and hooked sharp claws.
The piercer or sucker of the flea is lodged between its fore-legs, and includes a couple of darts or lancets; which, after the piercer has made an entrance, are thrust farther into the flesh, to make the blood flow from the adjacent parts, and occasion that round red spot, with a hole in the centre of it, vulgarly called a flea-bite.
This piercer, its sheath opening sidewise and the two lancets within it, are very difficult to be seen; unless the two fore-legs, between which they are hid, be cut off close to the head: for the flea rarely puts out its piercer, except at the time of feeding, but keeps it folded inwards; and the best way of seeing it is by cutting off first the head, and then the fore-legs, and then it is usually seen thrust out in convulsions.
By keeping fleas in a glass tube corked up at both ends, but so as to admit fresh air, their several actions may be observed, and particularly their way of coupling, which is performed tail to tail; the female, which is much the larger, standing on the male. They may also be thus seen to lay their eggs, not all at once, but ten or twelve in a day, for several days successively; which eggs will be afterwards found to hatch success-
sively in the same order. The flea may easily be dissected in a drop of water; and by this means the stomach and bowels, with their peristaltic motion, may be discovered very plainly, as also their testes and penis, with the veins and arteries, though minute beyond all conception. Mr Lieuwenhoek affirms also, that he has seen innumerable animalcules, shaped like serpents, in the semen masculinum of a flea.
Pulex-Arboris, in natural history, the name given by Mr Reaumur to a very large genus of small animals. They are a kind of half-winged creatures: they have granulated antennæ; and some of them, in their most perfect state, have complete wings. These are distinguished from the others by the name of musca-pulex or the winged-pulex.
The several species of these creatures are of different colours: some are brown, others yellow; but the most frequent are green. They all feed upon the leaves of trees, which become withered and curled up on their eroding them; and they are so common, that wherever a leaf of a tree is found curled up, or of a different form from the others, it is highly probable these animals are on it, or that it is their work. Among trees the willow and the rose are the most infected by them; and among plants, the bean and the poppy. They live a social life, multitudes of males and females being found together. The females are easily distinguished from the males, by their being thicker in the body, and having larger bellies.
It is very wonderful, that of all the known animals of the winged kind, these are the only ones which are viviparous. This is easily seen beyond a possibility of doubt: for, on examining a cluster of them together, it is a common thing to see, by the help of a small magnifier, a female in the act of parturition; and the author† of this account frequently saw the young pulex protruded out, from a passage near the anus of the female, perfectly formed. He had suspected this from the total want of eggs among so numerous a tribe of animals, and from their remarkably speedy propagation, and was thus convinced of it by ocular demonstration.
They are armed with a tender and flexible proboscis; with which they seize hold of the young shoots of the tree they live upon, twisting the proboscis round it. These creatures are always seen naked and exposed, standing on the outside of the stalks and leaves, and sucking in their juices for nourishment with their proboscis. But there is another species of them, which are alike viviparous, and agree with them in all respects except in their manner of living. These get into the inner substance of the leaves, like the worms called ascarides; and feed on the parenchyma, being defended from all injuries by living between the integuments. In this case, the leaves they bury themselves in become scabrous and deformed, and produce a sort of galls: so that Malpighi erred in supposing all the galls of trees to be produced by the animals hatched of the eggs of ichneumon flies; since these animals, which are viviparous, and are of a very different kind from the worms of the ichneumon flies, equally produce them. A female of the species here treated of has been seen to bring forth seven young ones in a day: and thus, from residing alone in the tubercles which she had formed on a leaf, she in a little time becomes the mother of
of a numerous family; each of which raises its own tumour or gall on the leaf, which at first are small and round, and of a beautiful red like kermes.
Such of these as are of the male species have a certain time of rest, in which they lie buried in a silky matter, and afterwards become winged, flying nimbly about; whereas the females never are able to fly, but remain always half-winged. It is to be observed, however, that there is a different species of winged insects frequently found flying about the female pulices, as well as their own males; so that all the small-winged insects about them are not to be thought of their own species. These do not greatly differ in figure; but the one are harmless, and the others have stings, and hurt any part of the body on which they fix.