182 Scientific Intelligence. — Zoology. 



with an Egyptian swarm of gigantic winged ants, about IJ 

 inches long, and of a dark red colour, and the thickness of a 

 crow-quill, issuing, in an uninterrupted stream, from a hole be- 

 tween the square tiles of the floor. Such swarms are very com- 

 mon, and the air is then crowded with crows and hawks that 

 come to devour. One day, about an hour after sunset, we were 

 alarmed from without, by what seemed an excessively heavy 

 fall of rain pouring in torrents. On inquiry, the night was per- 

 fectly clear. Curiosity led me to go out with a light to examine 

 the cause. I found it proceeded from an almost inconceivable 

 number of black beetles issuing from the ground : they were 

 somewhat larger than the first phalanx of the thumb, and their 

 aggregated hum was the sound we had heard. To say they were 

 coming from the earth in thousands, or tens of thousands, 

 scarcely gives an adequate idea of their production. They 

 must be conceived as issuing in a continued torrent from every 

 inch over the ground, and filling the atmosphere with their 

 flight. — I shall give one other instance, which to me was pecu- 

 liarly interesting, and on that account, perhaps, more observed 

 by myself than by others. Mullye produces above all other 

 places those insects which are destructive to books and papers. 

 Notwithstanding the utmost care, exposure, and cleanliness, the 

 outside of books appears perforated with small holes, as if by a 

 pin, and apparently made for the entrance of a small species of 

 white worms, about a quarter of an inch long; colonies of 

 which, having thus got entrance among the leaves, there revel 

 in destruction. They eat in serpentine labyrinths, till the 

 whole book is traversed through and through, and destroyed. 

 Happily they seem to have a dislike to ink, and seldom attack 

 the printed part of the leaves till they have previously feasted 

 on the margin. At other stations, occasional examination of the 

 shelves, and opening the volumes, was sufficient to stop the in- 

 vaders; but at Mullye, no precaution whatever had any influ- 

 ence in restraining their ravages. I may also add, that it was 

 invariably necessary to alter the disposition of my library in the 

 dry and rainy weather. It is no exaggeration to say that books 

 of all kinds became, in the latter season, so swelled with mois- 

 ture, that a shelf cannot then hold more than three volumes 

 out of the four that it easily contains in the dry part of the 



