278 REMARKS ON THE 



make a sore that will teaze you for a long time. Your true 

 musquitoes, when they alight on you, don't begin to bite at 

 once, but sit down and feel your skin with their heaks, and 

 lift up a leg and put it down again, with sundry other ma- 

 noeuvres, and then commence operations : but there are some 

 species who come at you with the beak stretched out, as if 

 charging with a bayonet, and fairly have it in your skin ere 

 they alight ; these are gallynippers. Satis de Culicihus dic- 

 tum est. 



Next to the musquitoes in rank, as annoyances, come the 

 Tahanidce. First, there are two or three species of Chrysops, 

 of which you may have a hundred round yoiu* head waiting 

 for a chance to bleed you : then you have the true bred Ta- 

 hani, some as big as the last joint of your thumb ; there 

 can be no need of leeches where they are. Last come the 

 sand-flies, a most intolerable pest near the shore, and there 

 Only. I don't know the genus, they are little fellows, very 

 like our Ceratopogones, but possibly are Simulia, though 

 much smaller than our British species. Near the river they 

 are in millions, and creep into your hah*, whiskers, eye-brows, 

 and if you have silk or cotton gloves, put their heads in be- 

 tween the threads, and bite pretty smart, though not so very 

 bad, if they did not come at you by hundreds at a time. Such 

 are the troubles of an insect-collector in East Florida ; trou- 

 bles, however, he soon gets used to, and ceases to care about. 

 Much more remains to be said of the Diptera, much has 

 been passed over of interest in the other orders ; but already 

 I have made too long an introduction to my paper, and it is 

 more than time that I began the real subject of it. Gentle 

 reader, if so be that thou art gentle, as I hope thou art, par- 

 don the tediousness of much that has been written. No 

 doubt thou hast read in Gil Bias what made the Archbishop 

 of Grenada's homilies more tedious than usual ; a similar 

 cause has made this introduction what it is. For the future, 

 Dios te Hbre, lector, de Prologos largos, y de malos Epitetos. 

 On the 15th of June, we bade adieu to our excellent landlady 

 and her household, not forgetting all the negroes (for your 

 southern slaveholder, even, if leaving home for a long time, 

 shakes hands with his domestic slaves), and left Florida a 

 day or two afterwards. Our course northward lay through 

 the beautiful sea islands on the coast of Georgia. 



These islands produce the valuable sea-island cotton, and 

 are well cultivated in their interior ; their shores are in gene- 

 ral beautifully fringed with woods, though here and there is 

 a portion of salt marsh. But the voyage between them is 

 truly delightful, not only for the beauty of the scenery, but 



