The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-08-25
LITTLE, BUT MIGHTY.
Astonishing Feats of Strength of the
Pirate of the Insect World.

Astonishing Feats of Strength of the
Pirate of the Insect World.
From the Washington Evening Star.
The flea possesses all the piratical
instincts-thirst for blood, rapacity,
cruelty. He is, further, as ingenious in
devising tortures as he is untiring in
the torment of his victims.
The flea is built upon lines that make
him forever hungry. But his continu
Gus performance appetite is far from
being the oldest thing about him. Pro-
portionately to size he is the, Samson
of the universe. If an elephant had
the same relative strength he could
come near to overseeing a steel
f"amed skyscraper.
a flea, wingless, with a body out of
al proportion to his head, and all over
less than the sixteenth of an inch in
length, will leap upon plane surface
more than yard. This too, when he
has been Matched in hair, or straw, or
sand, and never known what it was
to have a full meal. More marvellous
still he will spring perpendicularly
upward from one to two feet. Fancy
a man or boy standing fiat-footed and
all of a sudden leaping over church
spire.
Wonderful things have been done
with f1eas. They have been put into
gold collars and set to drag about
lengths of gold chain at least one hun
dred times their own weight. Further,
an ingenious goldsmith back in the leis-
urely seventeenth century made a
coach and four in ivory and gold, with
a coachman on the box, position and
outriders, yet all so tidy it was drag
ged by a pair of fieas, working in gold
collars. They worked under bell
glass, and were exhibited in London
and Paris.
To fight like cats and dogs is the
synonym of continuing strife, but even
cats and dogs do not fight so bitterly
as cat fleas and dog -fieas. Oddly
enough, the cat fieas are bigger than
the dog fleas, so should be always vic
tors But here as elsewhere condition
tells. If the cat fieas are lazy and
luxurious-fat they can never grow
the small lean, keen-beaked dog fleas
kill them out.
The combatants stand up to fight
quite like a pair of prize ring orna-
ments. AS they have six legs they have
plenty to stand on and still spare
couple with which to belabor each 9TH
err. Upon neutral ground, as floor or
walk, the cat and dog fieas keep the
peace. But let one INVADE litter OF
coat sacred to the other, and there is
straightway a fight to a finish. Some
thing even more curious than this in
born antipathy is that dog fleas will
not live upon a cat nor cat fleas upon
a dog.
Fleas lay eggs after the insect man
ner, which hatch out tiny wrigglers,
very nearly invisible to the naked eye,
yet capable of feeding on moisture and
microbes-at least, one judges that to
be the diet, since fleas breed so largely
in sand, hair. straw and litter where
other food is lacking-and after a
while spinning themselves cocoons. The
cocoons are no bigger than tiny grains
of sand, but under the microscope show
as semi-translucent ovals beautifully
banded with pink and pearl. They are
formed upon top of the matrix, what
ever it may be, where the sun or the
light can strike them fair. Rain Just at
the Matching time often kills a whole
brood of sandfiies.
A fleas beak is sharp and hard, some
thing like a birds, only more pointed.
A flea bite is not poisonous, save and
except in rare cases where a flea has
previously been biting infected tissue.
Certain French scientists have shown
that both fieas and bed bugs could thus
carry tubercular infection. Further.
rats and rat fleas are greatly dreaded
as helping to spread the fearful bu-
bcnic plague.