DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 101 



Coddia, which he says " bites desperately, as bad as if a man were burnt 

 by a coal of fire ; but they are of a noble nature, and will not begin 

 unless you disturb them." The reason the Cinghalese assign for the hor- 

 rible pain occasioned by their bite is curious, and will serve to amuse you. 

 " Formerly these ants went to ask a wife of the Noya, a venomous and 

 noble kind of snake ; and because they had such a high spirit to dare to 

 offer to be related to such a generous creature, they had this virtue bestow- 

 ed upon them, that they should sting after this manner. And if they had 

 obtained a wife of the Noya, they should have had the privilege to sting full 

 as bad as he."^ Stedman's story of a large ant that stripped the trees of 

 their leaves, to feed, as was supposed, a blind serpent under ground^, is 

 somewhat akin to this : as is also another, related to me by a friend of 

 mine, of a species of Mantis, now in my cabinet, taken in one of the 

 Indian Islands, which, according to the received opinion amongst the 

 natives, was the parent of all their serpents. Whence, unless perhaps 

 from their noxious qualities, could this idea of a connection between Insects 

 and these reptiles be derived ? But to return from this digression — 

 Madame Merian's Ant of visitation (^Atta cephalotes) will be considered 

 in a subsequent letter : but I cannot here omit a circumstance mentioned 

 by Don Felix de Azara, a Spanish traveler, who confirms her account, — 

 that these animals are so alarming and tremendous in their attacks, that if 

 they enter a house in the night, the inhabitants are obliged to rise with all 

 speed and run off in their shirts. 



I must next direct your attention to an insect, which perhaps more than 

 any other has been in every age an object of terror and abhorrence — I 

 mean the redoubted scorpion. And though I shall not, with Aristotle, tell 

 you of Persian kings employing armies for several days in destroying 

 them ; or, with Pliny, of countries that they have depopulated ; yet my 

 account will not be devoid of that species of interest which the dread of 

 its power to do us injury imparts to any object. Could you see one of 

 these ferocious animals, perhaps a foot in length, a size to which they 

 sometimes attain, advancing towards you in their usual menacing attitude, 

 with its claws expanded, and its many-jointed tail turned over its head ; 

 were your heart ever so stout, I think you would start back and feel a 

 horror come across you ; and though you knew not the animal, you would 

 conclude that such an aspect of malignity must be the precursor of ma- 

 lignant effects. Nor would you be mistaken, as you will presently see. 

 This alarming animal, though, like hymenopterous insects, it is armed with 

 a sting, is in no respect related to that order, and forms the only genus, 

 at present known, of the others that is so armed. Even its sting is totally 

 different from that of bees, wasps, and other Hymenoptera, being more 

 analogous to the venomous tooth of serpents ; it wounds us with no barbed 

 darts concealed in a sheath, but only with a simple incurved mucro ter- 

 minating an ampullaceous joint. Two orifices, or, according to some, 

 three, are said to instil the poison, which, we are informed, is sometimes 

 as white as milk. This venom in our European species is seldom attended, 

 except to minor animals, by any very serious consequences ; yet when it 

 is communicated by the scorpion of warmer climates it produces more 



' Knox's Ceylon, 24. « Stedman, ii. 142. 



9* 



