SUCKING INSECTS. 199 



Stedman also mentions, as a proof of the dreadful 

 state to which he and his soldiers were reduced by 

 them, that they were forced to sleep with their heads 

 thrust into holes made in the earth with their bay- 

 onets, and their legs wrapped round with their 

 hammocks.^ ' The gnats in America,' says 

 Mouffet, ' do so plash and cut, that they will pierce 

 through very thick clothing ; so^^that it is excellent 

 sport to behold how ridiculously the barbarous 

 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.'! Weld tells us that ' these insects were 

 so powerful and bloodthirsty;,; that they actually 

 pierced through General Washington's boots. 'J 

 This does not appear very credible, though Mouffet 

 says, ' In Italy, near the Po, great store and very 

 great ones are to be seen, terrible for biting, and 

 venomous, piercing through a thrice-doubled stock- 

 ingj and boots likewise^ sometimes leaving behind 

 them impoysoned, hard, blue tumours, sometimes 

 painful bladders, sometimes itching ^pimples, such as 

 Hippocrates hath observed in his Epidemics, in the 

 body of one Cyrus, a fuller, being frantic. '§ When 

 we consider these circumstances, we cannot justly 

 discredit that they attacked so fiercely the army of 

 Juhan the Apostate as to drive him back ; or that 

 Sapor, king of Persia, as reported, should have been 

 compelled to raise the siege of Nisibis by a plague of 

 gnats, which, attacking his elephants and beasts of 

 burden, so caused the route of his army.|| 



At Oxford, during the summer of 1766, gnats 

 were sometimes seen towards evening in such my- 

 riads as literally to darken the rays of the sun. Mr 

 Swinton mentions, that one evening, about half an 



* Surinam, ii, 93. t Theatre of Insects, p. 955. 



X Travels, p. 205. § Ut supra, p. 953. 

 II Theodorit. Hist. Eccles. ii, 30. 



