INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 171 



fur) in an old coat, which it devoured, making holes and channels in it ; 

 and another insect of the same order (^Attagenus pellio), Linne tells us. 

 will sometimes entirely strip a fur garment of its hair.^ A small beetle of 

 the Capricorn tribe (^CaUi/dium pygmceum Fahr.) I have good reason to 

 believe devours leather, since I have found it abundant in old shoes.^ 



Next to our garments our houses and buildings, which shelter us and 

 our property from the inclemency and injuries of the atmosphere, are of 

 consequence to us: yet these, solid and substantial as they appear, are 

 not secure from the attack of insects ; and even ou*- furniture often suffers 

 from them. A great part of our comfort within doors depends upon our 

 apartments being kept clean and neat. Spiders by their webs, which they 

 suspend in every angle, and flies by their excrements, which they scatter 

 indiscriminately upon every thing, interfere with this comfort, and add 

 much to the business of our servants. Even ants will sometimes plant 

 their colonies in our kitchens (I have known the horse-ant, Formica rufa, 

 do this), and are not easily expelled.^ Those of Sierra Leone, as 1 was 

 once informed by the learned Professor Afzelius, make their way by mil- 

 lions through the houses. They resolutely pursue a straight course ; and 

 neither buildings nor rivers, even though myriads perish in the attempt, 

 can divert them from it. Several tribes of insects seek their food in the 

 timber employed in our houses, buildings, gates or fences, or made up into 

 furniture. The large oaken beams, which, according to the old mode of 

 building, support the joists of the upper floors in the houses at Brussels, 

 as I had an opportunity of observing when there in 1836, have often their 

 extremities so eaten away like a honeycomb by the larvae of a beetle 

 {Anohium tessellatum, some of the dead perfect insects of which I found 

 in their holes), that it is necessary to replace them at great expense to 

 prevent the floors coming down ; and I subsequently saw beams similarly 

 attacked which had been removed from houses at Antwerp.^ M. Audouin 

 has laid before the French Academy an account of the injury done by 

 Termes lucifugus to the wood-work of buildings at Rochefort and La 

 Rochelle ; and of that of the new galleries of the Museum of Natural 

 History at Paris by the larvae of a small beetle {Lycius canaliculatus Fab.), 

 which feeds on thesapwood, in which its egg had probably been deposited 

 before the wood was worked up.^ Of one of the timber-eating beetles 

 (^Anohium pertinax) Linne complains " terebravit et destruxit sedilia mea^ ;" 

 and I can renew the same complaint against A. striatum, which not only 

 has destroyed my chairs, but also picture-frames, and has perforated 

 in every direction the deal floor of my chamber, from which it annually 

 emerges through little round apertures in great numbers. The utility of 

 entomological knowledge in economics was strikingly exemplified when 



' Arnccn. Acad. 346. 



* Hides and skins are attacked by several species of Dermestes, which are sometimes so 

 injurious in the large skin warehouses of London, that the merchants offered 20;000/. as a 

 reward for an available remedy. ( Westwood, Mod. Class. Ins. i. p. 158.) 



3 Within the last few years, a very minute yellow ant {Myrmica domestica Shuckard) has 

 become a great pest in many houses in Brighton, London, and Liverpool; in some cases to 

 so great an extent as to cause the occupants to leave them. Dr. Bostock was obliged to 

 replace the floor of his kitchen, under which they swarmed in incredible numbers, by a 

 new one resting on tiles imbeded in cement, (trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. 66. proc. li. lii. ; 

 Shuckard in Mas;. Nat. Hist. MS. ii. 626.) 



* Spence in Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. ii. proc. x. 



6 Guerin-Meneville, Eevue. Zoolog. 1840, p. i5L <= Syst. Nat. 563, 2. 



