IXDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 241 



some deduction from tliis account for exaggeration, still 

 the amount of damage will be very considerable. 



There are three kinds of insects better known, to 

 whose ravages, as most prominent and celebrated, I 

 shall last call your attention. The insects I mean are 

 the cock-roach (Blattaorientalis, L.) the house-cricket, 

 (Acheta domestical F.), and the various species of white 

 ants (Termes, L.). The last of these, most fortunately 

 for us, are not yet- naturalized. 



The cock-roaches hate the light, at least the kind 

 that is most abundant in Britain, (for B. germanica, 

 which abounds in some houses, is bolder, making its 

 appearance in the day, and running up the walls and 

 over the tables, to the great annoyance of the inhabi- 

 tants,) and never come forth from their hiding-places 

 till the lights are removed or extinguished. In the 

 London houses, especially in the ground-floor, they 

 are most abundant, and consume every thing they can 

 find, flour, bread, meat, clothes, and even shoes. As 

 soon as light, natural or artificial, re-appears, they all 

 scamper ojF as fast as they can, and vanish in an instant. 

 These pests are not indigenous here, and perhaps no 

 where in Europe, but are one of the evils which com- 

 merce has imported ; and we may think ourselves well 

 off that others of the larger species of the genus have 

 not been introduced in the same way — as, for instance, 

 Blatta gigantea, a native of Asia, Africa, and America, 

 many times the size of the common one, — which, not 

 content with devouring meat, clothes and books, even 

 attacks persons in their sleep,- and the extremities of 

 the dead and dying ^. 



The house-cricket may perhaps be deemed a still 



* Drury's Insects, iii. Preface. 

 TOL. I. " R 



