DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 125 



with its claws expanded, and its many-jointed tail 

 turned over its head ; were your heart ever so stout, I 

 think you would start back and feel a horror come 

 across you ; and, though you knew not the animal, you 

 would conclude that such an aspect of malignity must 

 be the precursor of malignant effects. Nor would you 

 be mistaken, as you will presently see. This alarming- 

 animal, though like hymenopterous insects it is armed 

 with a sting, is in no respect related to that order, and 

 forms the only genus, at present known, of the others 

 that is so armed. Even its sting- is totally different 

 from that of bees, wasps, and other Hymenoptera, be- 

 ing- more analogous to the venomous tooth of serpents ; 

 it wounds us with no barbed darts concealed in a sheath, 

 but only with a simple incurved mucro terminating- an 

 ampullaccous joint. Two orifices, or according to 

 some three, are said to instill the poison, which, we 

 are informed, is sometimes as white as milk. This ve- 

 nom in our European species is seldom attended, ex- 

 cept to minor animals, by any very serious conse- 

 quences ; yet when it is communicated by the scorpion 

 of warmer climates it produces more baneful effects. 

 The sting- of certain kinds common in South America 

 causes fevers, numbness in various parts of the body, 

 tumours in the tongue, and dimness of sight, which 

 symptoms last from twenty-four to forty-eight hours. 

 The only means of saving- the lives of our soldiers who 

 were stung by them in Egypt, was amputation. One 

 species is said to occasion madness ; and the black scor- 

 pion, both of South America and Ceylon, frequently 

 inflicts a mortal wound ^. No known animal is more 



^Ulloa's Fo^.i. 61,62. Dr. Clarke's 2VfliJt?f, i. 4&6. Amoicux, 19T. 



