PRELIMINARY NOTE ON THE SPERMATOGENESIS OF PEDICULUS VESTIMENTI

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Abstract
If we omit the one egg deposited the day the female died the daily average for the remaining 112 eggs is 4.9.1 113 eggs were deposited from August 23 to September 15 and all of these developed to the nymph stage, though six failed to completely emerge from the egg. The above record shows that the male died September 6 and the female died September 15. From September 6 each daily deposition of eggs was isolated to determine how long the eggs were fertilized after the last mating (September 5). The record shows that all the eggs developed and that all hatched but one. As the female had her third moult between the 18th and 19th of August, she lived only 28 days after maturity, less than the average length of life for a female; but other females in the laboratory kept under the same conditions lived 42 days, 40 days, 39 days, etc. Bacot found the average length of life of a female to be 34 days. If my lice are a little below this average I think it is probably due to the difference in feeding—he fed his lice six or seven hours daily and mine were fed only one hour daily. According to my experience, the longer a race is bred in the laboratory the less prolific they become and the death rate is much higher. I believe this is due entirely to an abnormal lack of nourishment. Feeding only one hour in twenty-four is certainly very abnormal for these insects. One cannot study the record of the large amount of experimental work done on the louse without being impressed with the need of feeding these insects apart from the human host before certain problems now in dispute can be solved. My efforts have been largely given to this well high hopeless task which is my apology for a very superficial study of the spermatogenesis.

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