230 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



glass cylinders, which St. Pierre tells us is the custom 

 in the Island of Mauritius'*; in otliers the candlesticks 

 are placed in soup-plates, into which the insects are 

 precipitated and drowned. Nothing can exceed the 

 irritation caused by the stinking bugs when they get 

 into the hair or between the linen and the body ; and 

 if they be bruised vipon it the skin comes off''. To use 

 the language of a poet of the Indies, from whom some 

 of the above facts are selected, 



*' On every dish the booming beetle falls, 

 The cock-roach plays, or caterpillar crawls; 

 A thousand shapes of variegated hues 

 Parade the table and inspect the stevps. 

 To living walls the swarming hundreds stick, 

 Or court, a dainty meal, the oily wick; 

 Heaps over heai)s their slimy bodies drench, 

 Out go the lamps with suffocating stench. 

 When hideous insects every plate defile, 

 The laugh how empty, and how forced the smile*!" 



Drugs and medicines also, though often so nauseous 

 to us, form occasionally part of the food of insects. A 

 smaiil beetle (Sinodendrum pusilium, F.'") eats the roots 

 of rhubarb, in which I detected it in the East India 

 Company's warehouses. Opium is a dainty morceau to 

 the white ants'"; — and, what is more extraordinary, 

 Anobium paniceum, ¥J (a coleopterous insect that 



• Voyage, &c. 72. * Williamson's East Jmitu Vude Mauni, 



• Calcutta, a Poem, 83. ** Ptinus picetis, IMarsli. 



• On examining ninety-two chests of opium, part of (he r.Trgo saved 

 from the Charlton, previously to i-cshipping them from Chittagong for 

 China, thirteen were found to be full of white ants, which had almost 

 wholly devoured the opium. Article from Chillagong,Nov. 1812, in one 

 of the Ntu;spapers,Jufy 31, 1813. ' Plinus rubtUus^ Marsh, 



