eight weeks a single female would produce five thousand descendants! These humiliating in sects have always been esteemed a kind of pest, and are generally supposed to be the ill con sequence of personal negligence; and of course abound more in the habitations of poverty, where a scanty supply of linen, and the want of other comforts, generate filth. But there are also several memorable instances recorded, both in sacred and profane history, of persons of the highest rank, possessing every accommodation that cleanliness can supply, having been so much infested by these creatures, as to have suffered fatal effects from them; nor could any means be devised to destroy them, and save the sufferer from such an odious death

The genus Gulex, or Flea, succeeds, and though very troublesome and disagreeable, is not quite so odious as the last mentioned. The eggs are very small, of an oval shape, white colour, and a polished surface. In six days these produce a worm-shaped larva, beset with distant hairs, and furnished at the head with a pair of short antenna, and at the tail with two curved forks, but are wholly destitute of legs. Pigeons' nests, and those of other birds arc the receptacles often chosen by the parent for her eggs, where the larve find a rich supply of food in the blood of the young ones. In

less