140 INDIRECT mjUPJES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



indigenous here, and perhaps nowhere in Europe, but are one of the evils 

 which commerce has imported ; and we may think ourselves well off that 

 others of the larger species of the genus have not been introduced in the 

 same way — as, for instance, Blatta gigantea, a native of Asia, Africa, and 

 America, many times the size of the common one, which, not content with 

 devouring meat, clothes, and books, even attacks persons in their sleep, 

 and the extremities of the dead and dying.^ 



The house-cricket may perhaps be deemed a still more annoying insect 

 than the common cock-roach, adding an incessant noise to its ravages ; 

 since, although for a short time, it may not be unpleasant to hear 



" the cricket chirrup in the hearth," 



so constant a din every evening must very much interrupt comfort and 

 conversation. These garrulous animals, which live in a kind of artificial 

 tori'id zone, are very thirsty souls, and are frequently found drowned in 

 pans of water, milk, broth, and the like. Whatever is moist, even stock- 

 ings or linen hung out to dry, is to them a bonne boucJie ; they will eat the 

 scummings of pots, yeast, crumbs of bread, and even salt, or any thing 

 within their reach. Sometimes they are so abundant in houses asi to 

 become absolute pests, flying into the candles and into people's faces. 



At Cuddapa, in the ceded districts to the northward of Mysore, Captain 

 Green was much annoyed by a jumping insect, which, from his description, 

 I should take for the larva of a species of cricket. They were of a dun 

 colour, and from half to three-fourths of an inch in length. They abounded 

 at night, and were very injurious to papers and books, which they both dis- 

 coloured and devoured ; leather also was eaten by them. Such was their 

 boldness and avidity, that they attacked the exposed parts of the body when 

 you were asleep, nibbling the ends of the fingers, particularly the skin under 

 the nails, which was only discoverable by a slight soreness that succeeded. 

 So great was their agility that thev could seldom be cau^lit or crushed. They 

 were a mute insect, but probably the imago would make noise enough. 



But the luhite ants, wherever they prevail, are a still worse plague than 

 either of these insects — they are the great calamity, as Linne terms them, 

 of both the Indies. When they find their way into houses or warehouses, 

 nothing less hard than metal or glass escapes their ravages. Their favourite 

 food, however, is wood of all kinds, except the teak (Tcctona grandis) and 

 iron-wood {Sidcroxj/lon), which are the only sorts known that they will 

 not touch '^j* and so infinite are the multitudes of the assailants, and such 

 is the excellence of their tools, that all the timber-work of a spacious 

 apartment is often destroyed by them in a few nights. Exteriorly, how- 

 ever, every thing appears as if untouclicd; for these wary depredators, and 

 this is what constitutes the greatest singularity of their history, carry on 

 all their operations by sap and mine, destroying first the inside of solid 



1 Drury's Insects, iii. Preface. 



2 It is not its hardness that protects the teak, as the Asiatic Termites attack Lig- 

 num Vitae, but probably some essential oil disagreeable to them with which it is 

 impregnated. This is the more likely, since they will eat it when it is old and has 

 been long exposed to the air. Tannvi has been conjectured to be the protecting 

 substance, but eiToneously, as leather of every kind is devoured by them. (Wil- 

 liamson's East India Vade 3Iecum, ii. 56.) It is its hardness probably that protects 

 the iron-wood from the African Termites. (Smeathoiaa in PInlos. Trans. 1781, 

 11. 47.) 



