228 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



of their meat. A small cock-roach (Blatta lapponica, L.)? 

 which I have taken upon our eastern coast, swarms in 

 the huts of the Laplanders, and will sometimes anni- 

 hilate in a single day, a work in which a carrion-beetle 

 {Silpha lapponica, L.) joins, their whole stock of dried 

 iish. The quantity of sugar that flies and wasps will 

 devour, if they can come at it, especially the latter, 

 the diminutive size of the creatures considered, is asto- 

 nishing : — in one year long ago, Avhen sugar was much 

 cheaper than it is now, a tradesman told me he calcu- 

 lated his loss, by the wasps alone, at twenty pounds. 

 A singular spectacle is exhibited in India (so Captain 

 Green relates) by a small red ant w ith a black head. 

 They march in long files, about three abreast, to any 

 place where sugar is kept ; and when they are satu- 

 rated, return in the same order, but by a different route. 

 If the sugar, upon which they are busy, be carried into 

 the sun, they immediately desert it. What is very ex- 

 traordinary, these ants are also fond of oil. Our butter 

 and lard are stated to be eaten by the caterpillar of a 

 moth {Crambus pinguinaUsy F.). Muscaputris, L., the 

 parent fly of the jumping cheese-maggot, loses no op- 

 portunity, Ave know, of laying its eggs in our fresh 

 cheeses, and when they get dry and old the mite (Aca^ 

 rus Siro, L.) settles her colonies in them, which mul- 

 tiply incredibly. Other substances, more unlikely, do 

 not escape from our pygmy depredators. Thus Reau- 

 mur tells us of a little moth whose larva feeds upon cho- 

 colate, observing very justly that this could not have 

 been its original food*. Both a moth and a beetle 

 {Derm^stes surinamensis, L.) were detected by Leeu- 



• Rcaura. Hi. 276. 



