INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 177 



thi'ovvn into such a trepidation upon discovering some of 

 these pestilent insects just disclosed in a parcel of peas 

 he had brought from that country, lest he should be the 

 instrument of introducinjj so fatal an evil into his beloved 

 Sweden^. In the year 1780 an alarm was spread in some 

 parts of France, that people had been poisoned by eating 

 worm-eaten peas ; and they were forbidden by authority 

 to be exposed for sale in the market : but the fears of 

 the public were soon removed by the examination of some 

 scientific men, who found the cause of the injury to be 

 the insect of which I am now speaking'^. Another spe- 

 cies of Bruchus {B. pectinicnrnis) devours the peas in 

 China and Barbary. A leguminous seed, much used 

 when boiled as food for horses in India, known to Eu- 

 ropeans by the name of Gram, but in the Tamul dialect 

 called Koloo, and by the Moors Cooltee, is the appro- 

 priate food of a fourth kind of Bruchus, related to the 

 last, but having the antennae, which in the male are pec- 

 tinated, much shorter than the body. It is, perhaps, 

 B. scutellaris. A parcel of this seed '^ given me by Cap- 

 tain Green was full of this insect, several grains contain- 

 ing two. Molina, in his History of Chili, tells us of a 

 beetle, which he names Lucanus Pilmus, that infests the 

 beans in that country ; — a circumstance quite at variance 

 with the habits of the Lucanidcv, which all prey upon 

 timber. This insect was probably a Phalcria, in which 

 genus the mandibles are protruded from the head like 

 those of Lucanus ; and one species, as we have seen 

 above, feeds upon maize. 



=" Kalm's Travels, \. 173. *> Anioreux, 288. 



"^ I have raised plants from this seed, which appear from the foh'age 

 to belong either to Plimcolns or DoHchos. 

 VOL. I. N 



