from
CURIOSITIES OF NATURAL HISTORY
by
Francis T. Buckland, M.A.,
late student of Christ Church, Oxford,
and her majesty's inspector of salmon fisheries, etc.
BOOK FOUR - THE POPULAR EDITION
London: Richard Bently and son,
publishers in ordinary to her majesty the queen
1891
IN the month of July 1856, I discovered an individual who for twenty years had devoted his life to the intellectual training of fleas. He carried on his operations in a little room in Marylebone Street, London. I entered, and saw fleas here, fleas there, fleas everywhere; no less than sixty fleas imprisoned and sentenced to hard labour for life. All of them were luckily chained, or fastened in some way or other, so that escape and subsequent feasting upon visitors was impossible. A little black speck jumps up suddenly off the table whereon the performance takes placeÑI walk up to inspect, and find that it is a monster flea attired " a la convict;" he is free to move about, but, wherever he goes, a long gilt chain, tightly fastened round his neck, accompanies him.
Occasionally he tries to jump; the chain instantly brings him down again, strong as he is. If a flea be fastened to the end of an unbroken wheat straw, he will be strong enough to lift it right off the table on which it is placed. This discovery was first made by the flea proprietor, and made him turn his attention towards utilising the race. One would think it were not difficult to procure troops of fleas, and to train them to perform; but it appears that neither task is easy. It is very difficult to procure a lot of able-bodied fleas, and it is by no means every sort of flea that will do. they must be human fleas: dog fleas, cat fleas, and bird fleas are of no useÑthey are not lively enough, nor strong enough,and soon break down in their training. Human fleas, therefore, must be obtained somehow, and our friend has created a market for them. The dealers who supply the raw material are principally elderly females; the trade price of fleas, moreover (like the trade price of everything else), varies, but the average price is threepence a dozen. In the winter-time it is sixpence; and, on one occasion, the trainer was obliged to give the large sum of sixpence for one single flea. He had arranged to give a performance; the time arrived; he upacked the fleas; one, whose presence was nessaryto make up a certain number, was gone. What was to be done ? the vacancy must be filled. At last, an ostler, pitying the manager's distress, supplied the needful animal; but he required sixpence, for it, and sixpence he got.
While I was looking at the performance there came in a fresh supply of fleas; a swarm of them, in a vial bottle, huddled all together at the bottom. The flea trainer gave them a shake, and immediately they all began hopping about, hitting their little horny heads against the sides of the bottle (which was held sideways) with such force that there was a distinct noise, as if one had gently tapped the bottle with the nail. These fleas were not very good friends, for they were perpetually getting entangled in masses, and fighting with their tiny but powerful legs, and rolling over and over as if in mortal combat. They were not, however, fighting for life and death; for I did not see one that looked injured or tired after the melŽe.
I then observed one fact, which gave me great pleasure; namely, that fleas are at enmity with bugs. There was one bug in the bottle surrounded by many fleas; the poor bug rushed continually fiom one end of the bottle to the other, running the gauntlet of the assembled fleas; every flea he came near attacked him; at last, the bug, overwhelmed by numbers, had the worst of it, and beat an ignoble retreat into a bit of flannel.
Fleas are not always brought to market in vial bottles. The best fleas are imported from Russia, and come over in pill-boxes packed in the finest cotton-wool. These fleas are big, powerful, and good workers. I wonder whether the Custom House authorities think it worth while to examine the contents of these pill-boxes. When our friend in Marylebone makes his annual tour into the provinces, his wife sends him weekly a supply of fleas in the corner of an envelope, packed in tissue-paper. She is careful not to put them in the corner where the stamp goes, as the post-office clerk would, with his stamp-marker, at one blow, smash the whole of the stock.
A flea cannot be taken up from its wild state and made to work at once; like a colt or a puppy, it must undergo a course of training and discipline. The training is brought about as follows:ÑThe flea is taken up gently, and a noose of the finest " glass-silk " is passed round his neck, and there tied with a peculiar knot. The flea, unfortunately for himself, has a groove or depression between his neck and his body, which serves as a capital hold fast for the bit of silk; it can slip neither up nor down, and he cannot push it off with his legs; he is a prisoner, and is thus tied to his work. This delicate operation is generally performed under a magnifying glass; but, after a time, the eye gets so accustomed to the work that the glass is not always used. In no way is the future performing flea mutilated; his kangaroo like springing legs are not cut off; nor are his lobster-like walking legs interfered withÑ a flea must be in perfect health to perform well.
The first lesson given to the novice is the same as that given to a child, namely, to walk. To effect this, he is fastened to the end of a slip of card-board, which works on a pin as on a pivot; the moment he feels himself free from the hands, or rather forceps, of the harnesser, he gives a tremendous spring forward: what is the consequence ? he advances in a circle, and the weight of the card-board keeps him down at the same time. He tries it again with the same result; finally he finds the progress he makes in no way equal to his exertions; he therefore, like a wise flea, gives it up, and walks round and round with his card-board as quietly as an old blind horse does in a mill. To arrive at this state of training requires about a fortnight; some fleas have more genius for learning than others, but a fortnight is the average time.
There is another mode of training fleas: it is to shut them up in a small glass box, which turns easly between two upright supporters. The flea, when first put in, hops wildly about, but he only hits his head against the top of the box, and at the same time is supposed to get giddy with the turning round of his prison.
Among the trained fleas already at work, I noticed the following groups. A coach with four fleas harnessed to it, who draw it along at a pretty good pace; I should feel inclined to back the coach in a race against a common garden snail. The coach is very heavy for the little creatures to drag along, for one pane of glass in the window is equal to the weight of one hundred fleas. There is a large flea, whose daily task is to drag along a little model of a man-of-war; it is amusing to see him push and struggle to get it along; but get it along he does,although it is two hundred and forty times his own weight. Again, there are two fleas secured, one at each end of a very little bit of gold-coloured paper. They are placed in a reversed position to each otherÐ one looking one way, the other the contrary. Thus tied, they are placed in a sort of arena on the top of a musical box; at one end of the box sits an orchestra composed of fleas, each tied to its seat, and having a minute model of some musical instrument tied on to one of its legs. The box is made to play, the exhibitor stirs up each of the musicians with a bit of stick, and they all begin waving their legs about, as if performing and keeping time to an elaborate piece of music. The fleas tied to the gold-coloured paper feel the jarring of the box below them, and begin to run round and round as fast as their little legs will carry them. This is called the Fleas' Waltz.
Tightly secured in a chair sits a flea facing a tiny cannon. Several times a day this unfortunate insect fires the cannon, and in this wise:ÑOne of the little slips which form the feather of a quill-pen is fastened on to one of his legs, and a little detonating powder placed on its tip; the exhibitor then presses the wand down on to the cannon, and scratches the detonating powder; it goes off with a sharp report, making the lookers-on jump, but it astonishes nobody more than the flea himself; he flourishes the burnt remains of his firing wand madly about in the air, his numerous legs kick about violently, his little head bobs up and down, and altogether he shows as many symptoms of alarm as it is possible for a flea to exhibit. The individual flea that I saw in this state of trepidation did not seem to have got used to his work, though the poor thing had been firing his cannon about thirty times a-day for s month.
The fleas are not kept always in harness; every night each flea is taken out of his trappings, is fed, and placed in a private compartment in a box for the night; before they go to bed, they have their supper, and in the morning also their breakfasts; they take their meals from the hands of their ownerÑsometimes he has nearly all his fleas on the backs of his hands at the same moment, biting and sucking away simultaneously. For more than twenty years has he thus daily fed his fleas without any detriment to his health; the quantity of blood each flea takes away being imperceptibly smallÑ one drop of blood, he considers, would feed a flea for many weeks; but it is the itching sensation caused by the flea cutting the skin which is unpleasant. This feeling of irritation he felt painfully when he first began to submit himself to the tender mercies of his little performers: now he is so hardened that he feels them not at all, whether biting or sucking. When, however, there are many fleas feeding on his hands at the same time, he suffers from a sensation of great irritation all over his body, which passes away when the supper is over. He has remarked that his fleas will not feed if his hand be not kept perfectly motionless; the act, therefore, of feeding and harnessing his company of performers is troublesome, and he is obliged to devote two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon to it. His fleas generally live a long time, provided they are properly fed and taken care of. He once had a flea, a patriarch, who for eighteen months was occupied in pulling up a little bucket from a well; this flea lived longer than any other he ever had, and he believes he died finally from pure old age; for he was found dead one day, faithful to his posts with his bucket drawn half-way up the well.
