INSECTS AND MANKIND 



439 



traps. In many wars of the last century, when the import- 

 ance of house-flies from this point of view was unknown, 

 armies exposed to risks of infection through the absence of 

 sanitary precautions now regarded as essential, often suffered 

 far more heavily from fly-borne typhoid casualties than 

 from the attacks of the human enemy. 



In closing this brief account of the action of insects as 

 disease- carriers, the knowledge of which has become greatly 

 increased and recognised as of high importance in our own 

 day, it is instructive to remember that through human 

 history insect hosts have been regarded as possibly serious 



Fig. 88. — a, Bee, and b, Scarab Beetle on ancient Egyptian stone 

 slabs in the Manchester Museum ; a, from a Sixth Dynasty tomb (about 

 2700 B.C.), b, from an Eleventh Dynasty temple (about 2100 B.C.). 



enemies of man. Not only did men dread such obvious 

 ravagers of human food supplies as the swarms of locusts, 

 familiar to dwellers in the Mediterranean basin around 

 which were cradled the ancient civilisations ; the Egyptians 

 realised that flies and lice might be veritable plagues, and 

 the '' hornet " was regarded as an effective ally of the 

 Hebrews in their attack on the Canaanites. On Egyptian 

 inscribed stones, some of them of remote antiquity, the side 

 view of a hymenopterous insect (Fig. 88, a) with uplifted 

 wings is frequently depicted ; this would be identified by 

 many naturalists as a hornet or wasp, though it is believed 

 by scholars to represent a bee. It is of great interest, 



