JUST ABOUT BUGS.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 36, 10 November 1911, Page 7

JUST ABOUT BUGS.

The Louse and How to Get his

Heart's Blood.

The term louse covers a wider rang© of pests than might be supposed. Beside the head louse that has made itself "felt" so degrading among school children, we Ijave the book louse, devouring our literature, and the numerable tribes of plant lice devouring our fruit and flowers • and animal lice pestering birds and animals, with the single exception of the hog.

Viwed under! the microscope, the louse is a good illustration of the respiration of insects. Insects do not breathe through their heads. While in the larva or worm form, their lung tissue, called the trachea, is spread out" along their sides, just under the skin, ?jid the little spots seen along the sides of a worm are the breathing pores or openings where the lung tissue comes near the surface. At these points there is only a thin, lacelike covering, enough to keep tlie dust out, and when a worm humps its back up out of the mud it is simply to get a chance to breathe. A louse does not go through the larva state —it is hatched a louse, right from the egg or "nit," but its breathing pores may be seen as little dark spots all around near the edge of its back. The louse's claw is peculiar, and there are many variations of this particular, for every race of man has a louse with a different style foot, and they are all \ery persistent in following their own fashions. An expert microscopist could identify the clothing of a negro or an Indian if lice were found in it as easily as by the microscopic examination of a hair or a drop of blood.

The cure for this degrading pest is cleanliness, but lice may be caught from close contact with others in crowds, or from clothes hung in miscellaneous wardrobes, and reflect no discredit. White precipitate and sulphur ointment are effectual remedies where anything more than a finetoothed comb is needed. —Chicago "Socialist."