The Minor Horrors of War

THE extension of war into the Near and Far East has brought into action two genera of leeches which were and still are the cause of extreme inconvenience and even of real danger...

LICE form a small group of insects known as the _Anoplura_, interesting to the entomologist because they are now entirely wingless, though it is believed that their ancestry wer...

‘THE common house-fly [says Ruskin] is the most perfectly free and republican of creatures. There is no courtesy in him; he does not care whether it is a king or clown whom he t...

THERE is no doubt that the medicinal leech is one of the most beautiful of animals. Many of its cousins are uniform and dull in colour—‘self-coloured,’ as the drapers would call...

AMONG the numerous disagreeable features of the bed-bug is the fact that it has at least two scientific names—_Cimex_ (under which name it was known to the classical writers) an...

WE have seen that harvest mites are wont to insert their heads—or rather their mouth-parts—into the skin of human beings, but other mites show less restraint, and insert their w...

AS Mr. W. A. Harding has pointed out, eleven species of fresh-water leeches occur in these islands. But one of these, the _Hirudo medicinalis_, seems to be vanishing, and yet it...

Marke but this flea, and marke in this, How little that which thou denyst me is; It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee.

BUT there are other flies: first amongst which may be mentioned _Fannia canicularis_ and _F. scalaris_. These belong to the family known as Anthomyidae, and are distinguished fr...

IT is not only those insects that destroy the continuity of our soldiers’ integument which play a part in war. It has been well said that an army marches on its stomach; and the...

TICKS are mites ‘writ large,’ and until about the beginning of this century they were regarded with what one might call mild disgust and regret. Now, however, that they have bee...

WE do not know what life is, but we can at any rate record its manifestations; and we know that it is always associated with an extremely complex substance called by Purkinje ‘p...