INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 227 



article, such as bread, cakes, and the like. Old flour is 

 also very apt to be infested by the cheese-mite. In long 

 voyages the biscuit sometimes so swarms with the wee- 

 vil and another beetle (Dcrmestes pamceus, L.) that 

 they are swallowed with every mouthful ; and even the 

 ground peas so abound with these little vermin, that a 

 spoonful of soup cannot be taken free from thern^ 

 Bread is also devoured by Trogosita caraboides, a larger 

 beetle before alluded to''. 



Every one is aware that our animal food suffers still 

 more than our farinaceous from insects; but perhaps 

 you would not expect that our hams, bacon, and dried 

 meats should have their peculiar beetle. Yet so it is; 

 and this beetle, (^Dcrmestes lardarius, L.,) when a grub, 

 sometimes commits great devastation in them; as does 

 that of another described by De Geer under the name 

 of Tenebrio lardarius'^. How much our fresh meat of 

 all kinds, our poultry and fish, are exposed to the flesh- 

 fly, whose maggots will turn us disgusted from our ta- 

 bles, if we do not carefully guard these articles from 

 being blown by them, you well know; — and assailants 

 more violent, hornets, wasps, and the great rove-beetle, 

 Staphylinus maxillosus, L.) if butchers do not protect 

 their shambles, will carry off no inconsiderable portion 



* Sparrman, i. 103. This insect, by Swedish entomologists, is supposed 

 to be a species of jinoMum, F., {Ptimis, L.,) but the specimen preserved 

 in the Linnean cabinet is Sylpha rosea of Mr. Marsham, (^Chrysomela 

 pectoralis, F.) A small beetle of the first family of Cryptophagus of Ma- 

 jor Gyllenhal swarms often in the ship biscuit, and may probably be the 

 insect Sparrman here complains of under the name of Dermestespaniceus. 



" See above, p. 173. 



'^ De Geer, v. 46. This insect appears nearly related to Mr. Marsham's 

 Corticaria pulla {E. B. i. 11. 14.), if it be not the same insect. 



(J2 



