More Industrious Fleas

In this latest find of industrious fleas from 1832, the writer is not in anyway impressed by the exhibition. The Athenaeum was a weekly periodical published in London between 1828 and 1923. Thanks to google books for their digitisation of this paper.



The Athenaeum
Journal of English and Foreign Literature, Science, and the fine arts
No 219 London, Saturday, January 7, 1832 Price four pence.

Our weekly gossip on literature and art

"But our fashionable friends are spending their wonder on 'The Industrious Fleas' in Regent Street; a strange mania, for there is really nothing in the exhibition worthy a moment;s admiration the fleas have not been taught and trainedl there has been no patient labour bestored on their schooling; they are simply fastened ny a hind leg to a little car, modelled out of the pith of elder, and the struggles of the creatures to escape give motion to the carriage. A flea just caught would do the same thing."