Early Arrivals.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20541, 16 February 1935, Page 10

Early Arrivals.

Nature Notes.

By

James Drummond , F.L.S.. F.Z.S.

THE COMMON FLEA, Pulex irritans, is almost cosmopolitan. There is not complete support for a theory that it was first brought to New Zealand in Captain Cook’s vessels on his first vovage in 1769. and that before his arrival New Zealand was devoid of fleas. The theory may be sound, or it may not. If it is, New Zealand was an exception and is a shocking example of the common flea’s capacity to increase in a new country. It soon filled pas and Maori villages and found suitable breed ing-nlaces in warm sandy places in the North Island. About seventy-five years after Captain Cook’s first voyage a distinguished visitor pitched his tent in the open on the bank of the Waikato River. Dread of fleas deterred him from camping in the pa. The Maoris, who called them pakeha, said that they were introduced by Europeans, a statement made at an earlier date by J. L. Nicholas, who accompanied Samuel Marsden. The European rat flea, one of the carriers of bubonic plague, but not the most notorious, may be common on rats in New Zealand, the Hon G. M. Thomson discovered in his enquiries. Twelve years ago he was told that it was found on many rats examined in Wellington Hospital. The dog flea and the cat flea are present in large numbers. The mouse flea occurs on New Zealand mice, black rats, and brown rats. The bird flea is present on fowls. The rabbit flea has not been recorded in New Zealand. The common flea has been found on all sorts of animals. Species that favour lower animals bite human beings. Cats in England, after hunting rabbits, returned home swarming with rabbit fleas. Diverse in species, multitudinous in numbers, fleas no longer are despised. Sir J. Arthur Thomson admired them. He declined to call them parasites, preferring the term beasts of prey. The safest plan is to dread them as a menace.