Report of the State Entomologist 327 



found another between the sheets in my bed at the hotel. I have 

 often found them under stones and logs in St. Clair county, Mo., and 

 occasionally in the same habitats about Clinton, Mo. 



Its Poisonous Bite. 



Mr. Van Ingen also gives an account of a bite received by him, 



which without doubt was inflicted by the Cermatia: 



It is poisonous, sometimes fatally so. The one at the hotel at 

 Osceola bit me in two places on the body. The flesh around 

 the bites became much inflamed and swollen, but did not 

 fester. This condition continued for four or five days, after 

 which the swelling and inflammation gradually subsided. Dr. 

 J. H. Britts has told me that he knows of a case in which a child 

 was bitten by a Cermatia and died from the effects. You state that 

 there is no record of its bite having been inflicted upon a human 

 being. I did not see the Cermatia bite, as from the circumstances it 

 was impossible to do so, but I felt the pain, and getting up and light- 

 ing a lamp and making examination for the cause, I found the Cer- 

 matia between the sheets. In each of the wounds, the punctures 

 made by the two mandibles were distinctly visible as small inflamed 

 spots. 



The poisonous nature of its bite had been recorded several years ago 

 in a note to the American Naluralid, for June, 1874, which had been, 

 until recently, overlooked by me. In it, Dr. Josiah Curtis, of Wash- 

 ington, D. C, wrote that a lady in the house with him had been bit- 

 ten upon her foot, by stepping barefoot upon a Cermatia in the dark. 

 She at first thought she had trodden on a carpet tack, but the sensa- 

 tion was quite different soon, being more like the effects of a coal of 

 fire. On lighting the gas the ci'eature wounded by her tread was 

 found. The bite was followed by much swelling in the foot, but 

 taking medical advice, it yielded to an application of ammonia and 

 camphor The swelling and pain continued for thirty-six hours, 

 meantime keeping the lady awake for nearly an entire night. 



In view of the above statements, where the fact of poisonous bites 

 having been inflicted under provocation will not be questioned, the 

 instance given in my 4th Keport (page 134) of a supposed Cermatia 

 bite, in the dormitory of a boarding-school [in Albany, N. Y.], will also 

 be accepted as adding a third to the number of such occurrences. 



