124 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



tained a wife of the Noya, they should have had the 

 privilege to sting- full as bad as he'*." Stedman's story 

 of a large ant that stripped the trees of their leaves, to 

 feed, as was supposed, a blind serpent under ground**, 

 is somewhat akin to this : as is also another, related to 

 me by a friend of mine, of a species of Mantis, now in 

 my cabinet, taken in one of the Indian islands, which, 

 according to the received opinion amongst the natives, 

 was tlie parent of all their serpents. Whence, unless 

 perhaps from their noxious qualities, could this idea of 

 a connexion between insects and these reptiles be de- 

 rived ? But to return from this digression Madame 



Merian's Ant of Visitation will be considered in a sub- 

 sequent letter : but I cannot here omit a circumstance 

 mentioned by Don Felix de Azara, a late Spanish tra- 

 veller, who confirms her account, — that these animals 

 are so alarming and tremendous in their attacks, that 

 if they enter a house in the night, the inhabitants are 

 obliged to rise with all speed and run oifin their shirts. 

 I must next direct your attention to an insect, which 

 perhaps more than any other has in every age been an 

 object of terror and abhorrence — I mean the redoubted 

 scorpion. And though I shall not, Avith Aristotle, tell 

 you of Persian kings employing armies for several days 

 in destroying them : or, with Pliny, of countries that 

 they have depopulated ; yet my account will not be 

 devoid of that species of interest which the dread of its 

 power to do us injury imparts to any object. Could 

 you see one of these ferocious animals, perhaps a foot 

 in length, a size to which they sometimes attain, adr 

 vancing towards you in their usual menacing attitude, 



* Knox's Cci/ion,2-l. *" Stedman, ii. 142, 



