Ar Breakfast, Dinxer, Tea, Supper. 3 



two Hio^hland lochs, because of the torturino- a«-onv 

 caused bj the attacks of myriads of the same kind 

 of hungry insects. At each footfall they rose in 

 savage clouds, assailing every exposed part of my 

 head and hands, even finding their way into my 

 nostrils and ears, and making me sneeze and shiver 

 in abject misery. It may come as news to some 

 people that workmen, while building houses in the 

 British Isles, have been known to wear veils to 

 protect them from midgets. 



Visitors to Venice in the spring-time notice how 

 numerous the mosquitoes become after the Swallows 

 have left, in the month of May, for their breeding 

 haunts in the north of Europe, and precisely the 

 same thing occurs at the places the birds leave 

 behind them on their return journey south. 



Some years ago, a gentleman calculated that the 

 value of the agricultural produce of the United States 

 in a single year was no less than three thousand eight 

 hundred million dollars, or, in round numbers, seven 

 hundred and sixty million pounds in English money, 

 and that one- tenth, or nearly ten million pounds' 

 worth, was destroyed every year by insects. 



Xot long since the Government paid for thirty- 

 five million caterpillars, which Aveighed no less than 

 thirty-six tons, and were destroying the trees and 

 plantations in Hong Kong Island before the natives 

 were set to work catching them. 



The people of France once made the experiment 

 of doing without birds, but suffered so disastrously 



