128 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



survives but a fevv hours. In the cork forests the sports- 

 man, eager in his pursuit of game, frequently carries 

 avray on his gai'ments this fatal insect, which is asserted 

 always to make towards the head before inflicting its 

 deadly wound ^. 



I suspect you will think this list long enough ; and I 

 believe it includes the most remarkable insects that assail 

 the surfiTce of our bodies, to answer either the demands 

 of hunger or the stimulus of revenge. Thei'e is how- 

 ever a third class of insect annoy ers, as I observed at 

 the beginning of this letter, which, though they neither 

 make us their food, nor attack us under the impulse of 

 fear or revenge, incommode us extremely in other ways. 

 These must now be detailed to you. 



How extremely unpleasant is the sensation which that 

 very minute fly, Thrips j^hijscqms, excites in sultry wea- 

 ther, merely by creeping over our skin ! I have some- 

 times found this almost intolerable. A similar torment 

 reckoned by Ulloa a kind of Mosquito, infests the inha- 

 bitants of Carthagena in South America. They are there 

 called Mantas blaiicas, and creeping between the threads 

 of the gauze curtains that keep off the former pest, 

 though the}' do not bite, occasion an itching that is 

 dreadfully tormenting^. But tliese are nothing compared 

 with the teasing attacks of another gnat [Simulium rep- 

 tatis), which, as Linne informs us, who misnamed it a 

 Culex, is so incredibly numerous in Lapland, as entirely 



* Jackson's Marncco, second edit. 



'' Ulloa, i. 64. Probably the Cafnfi, a white fly noticed by Hum- 

 boldt, is synonymous with this of Ulloa, which could only be pre- 

 vented from creeping between the threads of the curtains by keeping 

 them wet. Personal Narrative, E, T. v. 107. 



