INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 169 



sometimes even water in the casks of ships, in long voyages, so abounds 

 with larvae of this tribe as to render it extremely disgusting. Browne, in 

 his History of Jamaica, mentions an ant (Formica omnivora L.), probably 

 belonging to Myrmica, that consumes or spoils all kinds of food ; which 

 perhaps may be the same species that has been observed in Ceylon by 

 Percival, and is described by him as inhabiting dwelling-houses, and 

 speedily devouring every thing it can meet with. If at table any one 

 drops a piece of bread, or of other food, it instantly appears in motion as 

 if animated, from the vast number of these creatures that fasten upon it 

 in order to carry it off. They can be kept, he tells us, by no contrivance 

 from invading the table, and settling in swarms on the bread, sugar, and 

 such things as they like. It is not uncommon to see a cup of tea, upon 

 being poured out, completely covered with these creatures, and floating 

 dead upon it like a scum.^ 



In some countries the number of flies and other insects that enter the 

 house in search of food, or allured by the light, is so great as to spoil the 

 comfort of almost every meal. We are told that during the rainy season 

 in India, insects of all descriptions are so incredibly numerous, and so 

 busy every where, that it is often absolutely necessary to remove the lights 

 from the supper table : — were this not done, moths, flies, bugs, beetles, 

 and the like, would be attracted in such numbers as to extinguish them 

 entirely. When the lights are retained on the table, in some places they 

 are put into glass cylinders, which St. Pierre tells us is the custom in the 

 Island of Mauritius^; in others the candlesticks are placed in soup plates, 

 into which the insects are precipitated and drowned. Nothing can exceed 

 the irritation caused by the stinking bugs when they get into the hair or 

 between the linen and the body ; and if they be bruised upon it the skin 

 comes off?"^ To use the language of a poet of the Indies from whom 

 some of the above facts are selected, — 



" On every dish the booming beetle falls, 

 The cockroach plays, or caterpillar crawls : 

 A thousand shapes of variegated hues 

 Parade the table or inspect the stews. 

 To living walls the swarming hundreds stick, 

 Or court, a dainty meal, the oily wick ; 

 Heaps over heaps their slimy bodies drench, 

 Out go the lamps with suffocating stench. 

 When hideous insects every plate defile, 

 The laugh how empty, and how forced the smile !"* 



Drugs and medicines also, though often so nauseous to us, form occa- 

 sionally part of the food of insects. A small beetle (Sinodendrum yusil- 

 lum^) eats the roots of rhubarb, in which I detected it in the East India 

 Company's warehouses. Opium is a dainty morceau to the white 



escape. A few individuals of two minute beetles, Cryptuphagus cellaris and Mycataa hirta, 

 a minute Acarus, and Atropos lignarius, were found on the corroded curks, but seem more 

 likely to have been attracted by the oozing wine than to have originally caused the dam- 

 age. {Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. proc. Iv.)" Mr. Thwaites suggests that Blaps mortisaga \s 

 more likely to have eaten the corks than cockroaches, which do not usually frequent 

 cellars, whereas the former are found very generally in those of Bristol; and, as he has 

 observed the stomach of the individuals of these insects which he dissected to be filled 

 with what seemed saw-dust, they may probably also eat corks, which indeed he found they 

 did on putting them into a box along with the insects. 



» Ceylon, 307. 2 Voyage, &c. 72. 



' Williamson's East India Vade Mecum. * Calcutta, a Poem, 85. 



* Ftinus piceus, Marsh. 



15 



