104 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



says, do not bite, but torture incessantly by their titillation.^ — In New 

 South Wales a small ant was observed by Sir Joseph Banks, inhabiting 

 the roots of a plant, which when disturbed rushed out by myriads, and 

 running over the uncovered parts of the body, produced a sensation of 

 this kind that was worse than pain. 



The common house-fly is with us often sufficiently annoying at the close 

 of summer, so as to have led the celebrated Italian Ugo Foscolo, when 

 residing here, to call it one of his three " miseries of life."^ But we know- 

 nothing of it as a tormentor compared with the inhabitants of southern 

 Europe. — " I met (says Arthur Young in his interesting Travels through 

 France) between Pradelles and Thuytz, mulberries and flies at the same 

 time ; by the term Jlies I mean those myriads of them which form the 

 most disagreeable circumstance of the southern climates. They are the 

 first torments in Spain, Italy, and the Olive district of France: it is not 

 that they bite, sting or hurt, but they buzz, tease, and worry ; your mouth, 

 eyes, ears, and nose, are full of them : they swarm on every eatable, — 

 fruit, sugar, milk, every thing is attacked by them in such myriads, that if 

 they are not incessantly driven away by a person who has nothing else to 

 do, to eat a meal is impossible. They are however caught on prepared 

 paper and other contrivances with so much ease and in such quantities, 

 that were it not from negligence, they could not abound in such incredible 

 quantities. If I farmed in these countries, I think I should manure four 

 or five acres every year with dead flies. — I have been much surprised that 

 the late learned Mr. Harmer should think it odd to find, by writers who 

 treated of southern climates, that driving away flies was an object of im- 

 portance. Had he been with me in Spain and in Languedoc in July and 

 August, he would have been very far from thinking there was any thing 

 odd in it."3 



' Lack. Lapp. i. 208, 209. Fl. Lapp. 382, 383. It appears, however, from other authors, 

 that they do bite. 



s Annual Obituary, 1828, p. 393. 



3 Young's Travels in France, i. 298. These flies are equally troublesome and tormenting 

 in Sweden (see Anian Acad. iii. 343.), and also in the United States, where Mr. Stewart and 

 Capt. Marryat make frequent and grievous complaints of them, the latter asserting that in 

 some places they were fifty to the square inch, as I believe they literally were in a small 

 inn where we look breakfast in September 1830, on our road to Chamouni from Geneva. 



It is a remarkable, and, as yet, unexplained fact, that if nets of thread or string with 

 meshes a full inch square, he stretched over the open windows of a room in summer or 

 autumn, when flies are the greatest nuisance, not a single one will venture to enter from 

 without, so that by this simple plan a house may be kept free from these pests, while the 

 adjoining ones which have not had nets applied to their windows, will swarm with them. 

 In order, however, that the protection should be efficient, it is necessary that the rooms to 

 which it is applied should have the light enter by one side only ; for in those which have a 

 thorough-light the flies pass through the meshes without scruple. For a fuller account of 

 these singular facts, the reader is referred to a paper by W. Spence in Trans. Ent. Soc. 

 Land. vol. i. p. 1., and also to one in the same work, vol. ii. p. 45. by the Rev. E. Stanley, 

 now Lord Bishop of Norwich, who having made some of the experiments suggested by 

 Mr. Spence, found that by extending over the outside of his windows nets of a very fine 

 pack-thread with meshes 1 1-4 inch to the square, so fine and comparatively invisible that 

 there was no apparent diminution either of light or the distant view, he was enabled for the 

 remainder of the summer and autumn to enjoy the fresh air with open windows without 

 the annoyance he had previously experienced from the intrusion of flies, often so trouble- 

 some that he was obliged on the hottest days to forego the luxury of admitting the air by 

 even partially raising the sashes. "But no sooner (he observes) had I set my nets than I 

 was relieved from my disagreeable visitors. I could perceive and hear them hovering on 



