240 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS, 



singular gliding larva, when once it gets amongst them, 

 makes astonishing havoc, the birds soon shedding their 

 feathers, and the insects falling to pieces. — One of the 

 worst plagues of the entomologist are the mites (Aca- 

 rus Destructor, Schrank) : these, if his specimens be at 

 all damp, eat up all the muscular parts, (Lj/ita vesica^ 

 toria being almost the only insect that is not to their 

 taste,) and thus entirely destroy them. — If spiders by 

 any means get amongst them, they will do no little mis- 

 chief. — Some I liave observed to be devoured by a mi- 

 nute moth, perhaps Tinea Insectello, F. ; and in the 

 posteriorthighsof a species of Gri/Uus, F., from China, 

 I once found, one in each thigh, a small beetle conge- 

 nerous with Tenehriopallens, L. that had devoured the 

 interior. It is, I believe, either Acarus Destructor or 

 eriiditus that eats the gum employed to fasten down 

 dried plants. 



There are other insects which do not confine them- 

 selves to one or two articles, but make a general and 

 indiscriminate attack upon our dead stock. Ulloa men- 

 tions one peculiar to Carthagena, called there the co- 

 megen, which he describes as a kind of moth or maggot 

 so minute as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye. 

 This destroys, says he, the furniture of houses, parti- 

 cularly all kinds of hangings, whether of cloth, linen, 

 or silk, gold or silver stuffs or lace ; in short, every 

 thing except solid metal. It will ruin all the goods of 

 a warehouse in which it has got footing in a single 

 night, reducing bales of merchandize to dust without 

 altering their appearance, so that the mischief is not 

 perceived till they come to be handled^. If we make 



» Ulloa i. 61. 



