EATING INSECTS. 153 



IjINN.)» occasionally met with about London, swarms 

 numerously in the huts of the Laplanders, and will 

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

 pha Lapponica, 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- 

 tiplied 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 likewise 

 pollute every thing they crawl over, with an unplea- 

 sant nauseous smell. These black-beetles, as they 

 are commonly called, however, are harmless, when 

 compared with a foreign species, the giant-cockroach 

 {Blatta gigantea), which is not content with devour- 

 ing the stores of the larder, but will attack human 

 bodies, and will 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, 

 afford 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. 



