118 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



Small as this insect is, we must acknowledge the elephant, rhinoceros', 

 lion, and tiger, vastly his inferiors. The appearance, nay the very sound 

 of it, occasions more trepidation, movements, and disorder hoth in the 

 human and brute creation, than whole herds of the most ferocious wild 

 beasts in tenfold greater numbers than they ever are would produce. As 

 soon as this plague appears, and their buzzing is heard, all the cattle for- 

 sake their food, and run wildly about the plain till they die worn out with 

 fatigue, fright, and hunger. No remedy remains for the residents on such 

 spots but to leave the black earth and hasten down to the sands of Atbara, 

 and there they remain while the rains last. Camels, and even elephants 

 and rhinoceroses, though the two last coat themselves with an armor of 

 mud, are attacked by this winged assassin, and afflicted with numerous 

 tumors. All the inhabitants of the sea-coast of Melinda down to Cape 

 Gardefui, to Saba and the south of the Red Sea, are obliged in the begin- 

 ning of the rainy season to remove to the next sand to prevent all their 

 stock of cattle from being destroyed. This is no partial emigration — the 

 inhabitants of all the countries from the mountains of Abyssinia north- 

 ward, to the confluence of the Nile and Astaboras, are once a year obliged 

 to change their abode and seek protection in the sands of Beja ; nor is 

 there any alternative or means of avoiding this, though a hostile band 

 were in the way capable of spoiling them of half their substance.^ 

 This fly is truly a Beelzebub^; and perhaps it was this, or some species 

 related to it, that was the prototype of the Philistine idol worshipped 

 under that name and in the form of a fly. 



I must not conclude this subject of insects hurtful to our cattle without 

 noticing a beetle much talked of by the ancients for its mischievous pro- 

 perties in this respect. You will soon and rightly conjecture that I am 

 speaking of the Buprestis'^, so called from the injury which it has been 

 supposed to occasion to oxen or kine. 



Modern writers have been much divided in their opinion to what genus 

 this celebrated insect belongs. All indeed have regarded it as of the 

 Coleoptera order ; but here their agreement ceases. Linne should seem 

 to have looked upon it as a species of the genus to which he has given 

 its name ; but these, being timber insects, are not very likely to be swal- 

 lowed by cattle with their food. Geoffroy thinks it to be a Carabus or 

 Cicindela, but with as little reason, since the species of these genera do 

 not feed amongst the herbage ; and though they are sometimes found run- 

 ning there, yet their motions are so rapid, that it is not very likely that 

 cattle would often swallow them while feeding. 



M. Latreille, in an ingenious essay on this insect^ suspects it to belong 

 to the genus Meloe, and as this feeds upon herbs, (M. Proscarabaus and 

 M. violaceus, upon the Ranunculi, so widely disseminated in our pastures,) 

 his opinion seems to rest upon more solid grounds than that of his prede- 



1 The larvae of a species of CEstrus which infests the rhinoceros is figured in the Trans. 

 Ent. Soc. of London, vol. ii. pi. 22. fig. 1. 



* Bruce's Travels, 8vo. ii. 315. 



3 Heb. ^"QT ^53, literally " Lord-Fly." See 2 Kings, i. 2. ; and Bochart. Hierozoic. ps. 

 ii. 1. 4. c. 9. p. 490. 



■» Burn-Cow or Ox, from /Souj bos, and vprieoi inflamrao. M. Latreille translates it Crive- 

 bosuf, but improperly. 



^ Annahs du Museum. — Xe Ann. No xi. p. 129. 



