I couple of years back I discovered an article about Mr Kitchingman and his flea circuses from an Andy Clarke of The Foxearth and District Local History Society
A followup of this led to:
- The World of Wonders, A Record of Things Wonderful in Nature, Science and Art Published 1868
- En cherchant la petite bête By Albert Fournier
- The Curious World of Frank Buckland
The World of Wonders appears to have a fabulous article with pictures on page 37 about Professor Kitchingman and states "Professor Kitchingman, an enterprising entomologist recident near Brussels" and reference to what appears to be a tightrope act. The British Library has a copy of this so hopefully it's not one of those items that they are moving to Boston Spa.
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Albert Fournier's book also provides an interesting lead in the form of an new function in the google books search, the subject search. For example I could search for subject:"Fleas in literature".
Looking up "Frank Buckland", I discovered that he had written a series of books called "Curiosities of Natural History" which seems like a good lead too
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