CULICIDiE — GNATS. 281 



dreadful marches, the clouds of them were such, that the 

 soldiers dug holes with their bayonets in the earth, mto 

 which they thrust their heads, stopping the entry and cov- 

 ering their necks with their hammocks, while they lay with 

 their bellies on the ground: to sleep in any other position 

 was absolutely impossible. He himself, by a negro's ad- 

 vice, climbed to the top of the highest tree he could find, 

 and there slung his hammock among the boughs, and slept 

 exalted nearly a hundred feet above his companions, 

 "whom," says he, "I could not see for the myriads of mos- 

 quitoes below me, nor even hear, from the incessant buzzing 

 of these troublesome insects."^ 



" The Gnats in America," says Moufet, ''do so plash and 

 cut, that they will pierce through very thick clothing ; so 

 that it is excellent sport to behold how ridiculously the bar- 

 barous people, when they are bitten, will skip and frisk, and 

 slap with their hands their thighs, buttocks, shoulders, arms, 

 and sides, even as a carter doth his horses."^ Isaac Weld 

 tells us that ''these insects were so powerful and blood- 

 thirsty that they actually pierced through General Wash- 

 ington's boots. "^ They probably crept within the boots, 

 but the story is not incredible if we believe Moufet. This 

 naturalist says : " In Italy, near the Po, great store and 

 very great ones are to be seen, terrible for biting, and ven- 

 omous, piercing -through a thrice-doubled stocking, and 

 boots likewise (morsu crudeles et venenati, triplices call- 

 gas, imo ocreas, item perforantes), sometimes leaving be- 

 hind them impoysoned, hard, blue tumours, sometimes 

 painful bladders, sometimes itching pimples, such as Hip- 

 pocrates hath observed in his Epidemics, in the body of one 

 Cyrus, a fuller, being frantic."* 



The poet Spenser, in his View of Ireland, says the Irish 

 " goe all naked except a mantle, which is a fit house for an 

 outlaw — a meet bed for a rebel — and an apt cloak for a 

 thiefe. It coucheth him strongly against the Gnats, which, 

 in that country, doe more to annoy the naked rebels, and 



1 Stedra. Surinam, ii. 93. 

 ^ Ins. Theatr., p. 82. 

 8 Travels, 8vo. edit. p. 205. 

 * Ins. Theatr., p. 81. 



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