The British Museum of Natural History was in grateful receipt last week of a strange new gift500,000 Mallophaga, the world's leading collection of bird lice.
The donor of the collection is 73-year-old Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, D.S.O., late of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, who first took up his odd pursuit in 1928, after more than 25 years spent in fighting the Empire's battles, from skirmishes in India to the trenches of World War I. Instead of retiring to his London town house, which bristles with lion and panther heads, he teamed up with his young cousin, Zoologist Theresa Clay, and mounted...
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