EATING INSECTS. 153 



Linn.), occasionally met with about London, swarms 

 numerously in the huts of the Laplanders, and will 

 sometimes, in conjunction with a carrion-beetle {Sil- 

 jjJici Laponica, Linn.), devour in a single day their 

 whole store of dried fish. In London, and many 

 other parts of the country, cockroaches — originally, 

 it would appear, introduced from abroad — have mul- 

 tiphed so prodigiously as to be a very great nuisance. 

 We have seen them so numerous in kitchens and 

 lower rooms in the metropolis as literally to cover the 

 floor, and render it impossible for them to move, ex- 

 cept over each other's bodies. This, indeed, only 

 happens after dark, for these are strictly night insects, 

 and the instant a candle is intruded upon their as- 

 sembly, they rush towards their hiding places, and in 

 a few seconds not one of the countless multitude is to 

 be seen. In consequence of their numbers, inde- 

 pendently of their carnivorous propensities, they are 

 forced to eat every thing which comes in their way ; 

 and besides devouring every species of kitchen stuff, 

 they gnaw clothes, leather, and books. They like- 

 wise pollute every thing they crawl over, with an un- 

 pleasant nauseous smell. These black-beetles, as 

 they are commonly called, however, are harmless, 

 when compared with a foreign species, the giant-cock- 

 roach (Blatta gigcmtea), which is not content with de- 

 vouring the stores of the larder, but will attack human 

 bodies, and wUl gnaw the extremities of the dead and 

 the dying.* 



Another family of the same order are no less savage 

 than voracious, and, together with the numerous other 

 instances which we have given of cannibal insects, 

 afibrd no colour to the doctrine maintained by some, 

 that man is the only animal who preys on his own 

 species. According to Sir Walter Scott, 



* Drury's Illustrations of Nat. Hist, iii, Pref. 



