DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 129 



How extremely unpleasant is the sensation which that 

 very minute creature, Thrips phi/sapus, L., excites in 

 sultry weather, merely by creeping over our skin! I 

 have sometimes found this almost intolerable. A simi- 

 lar torment, reckoned by Ulloa a kind of Mosquito, in- 

 fests the inhabitants of Carthagena in South America. 

 They are there called Mantas hlancas^ and creeping be- 

 tween the threads of the gauze curtains that keep oiFthe 

 former pest, though they do not bite, occasion an itch- 

 ing that is dreadfully tormenting''. But these are no- 

 thing compared with the teasing attacks of the Simu- 

 lium reptans, Latr., which, as Linne informs us, who 

 misnamed it a Culex, is so incredibly numerous in Lap- 

 land, as entirely to cover a man's body, turning a white 

 dress into a black one, occupying the whole atmosphere, 

 filling the mouth, nostrils, eyes, and ears of travellers, 

 and thus preventing respiration, and almost choking 

 them. These little animals do not bite, but torture in- 

 cessantly by their titillation'', — In New South Wales 

 a small ant was observed by Sir Joseph Banks, inha- 

 biting the roots of a plant, which when disturbed rushed 

 out by myriads, and running over the uncovered parts 

 of the body produced a sensation of this kind that was 

 worse than pain 



The common house-fly is with us often suJfRciently 

 annoying at the close of summer ; but we know nothing 

 of it as a tormentor compared with the inhabitants of 



* UUoa, i. 64. These insects probably belong to Latreille's genus Simu- 

 lium, and may be what are distinguished by French travellers from the 

 Mosquitos, (which they call Maringouins or Maragoins,) under the name of 

 Mousliques,oivt\\\ch he had examined specimens, having all the characters 

 of that genus, brought from America by Michaux. Ilist. Nat. xiv. 272. 283, 



" Lack. Lapp. \. 208,209. Fl. Lapp. 382, 383. 

 T<JL. I. K 



