94 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



" There is certainly no form of wretchedness among those to which the 

 chequered Hfe of a Voyageur is exposed, at once so great and so humih- 

 ating, as the torture inflicted by these puny blood-suckers. To avoid 

 them is impossible. At last, subdued by pain and fatigue, he throws him- 

 self in despair with his face to the earth, and half suffocated in his blanket 

 groans away a few hours of sleepless rest." We have one species (iSVo- 

 moxys calcitrans), alluded to in a former letter, as so nearly resembling 

 the common house-fly, which, though its oral instruments are to appear- 

 ance not near so tremendous, is a much greater torment than the horse-fly. 

 This little pest, I speak feelingly, incessantly interrupts our studies and 

 comfort in showery weather, making us even stamp like the cattle by its 

 attacks on our legs ; and, if we drive it away ever so often, returning 

 again and again to the charge. In Canada they are infinitely worse. " I 

 have sat down to write," says Lambert (who, though he calls it the house- 

 fly, is evidently speaking of the Stomoxys), "and have been obliged to 

 throw away my pen in consequence of their irritating bite, which has 

 obliged me every moment to raise my hand to my eyes, nose, mouth and 

 ears in constant succession. When I could no longer write, I began to 

 read, and was always obliged to keep one hand constantly on the move 

 towards my head. Sometimes in the course of a few minutes I would 

 take half a dozen of my tormentors from my lips, between which I caught 

 them just as they perched."^ 



The swallow-fly (^Craterina Hirundinis^) , whose natural food is the 

 bird after which it is named, has been known to make its repast on the 

 human species. One found its way into a bed of the Rev. R. Sheppard, 

 where it first, for several nights, sorely annoyed a friend of his, and after- 

 wards himself, without their suspecting the culprit. After a close search, 

 however, it was discovered in the form of this fly, which, forsaking the 

 nest of the swallow, had by some chance taken its station between the 

 sheets, and thus glutted itself with the blood of man. — In traveling be- 

 tween Edam and Purmerend in North Holland (July 21, 1815), in an 

 open vehicle, I was much teased by another bird-fly (^Omithomyia avicu- 

 laria) (two individuals of which I caught) alighting on my head, and in- 

 serting its rostrum into my flesh. — Mr. Sheppard remarks, as a reason for 

 this dereliction of their appropriate food, that no sooner does life depart 

 from the bird that these flies infest than they immediately desert it and 

 take flight, alighting upon the first living creature that they meet with; 

 which if it be not a bird they soon quit, but, as it should seem from the 

 above facts, not before they have made a trial how it will suit them as food. 



But of all the insect-tormentors of man, none are so loudly and univer- 

 sally complained of as the species of the genus Culex L., whether known 

 by the name of gnats or mosquitos.^ Pliny, after Aristotle, distinguishes 



» Travels, fee. i. 126. « gge Curtis's Brit. Ent. t. 122. 



' It has been generally supposed by nainralists, that the Mosquitos oi' America belong to 

 the Linncan genus Culex ; but the celebrated traveler Humboldt asserts that the term 

 Mosquito, signifymg a little fij, is applied there to a Simulium Latr. (Simnlia Meig.), and 

 that the Culices, which are equally numerous and annoying, are called Zancudoes, which 

 means Ions; f^S^- The former, he says, are what the French call Mousiiqi/.es, and the latter 

 Marinoouins. {Personal Nnrrafive, E. T. v. 93.) Humboldt's remark, however, refers only 

 to South America; Mr. Westwood informing us thai 3Insquito is certainly applied to a 

 species of Culex in the United Slates, the inhabitants giving the name of black-fly to a 

 small Simulium. See ^^ An Introduction to the Modern Classihcation of Insects, by J. 0. 



