314 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM liNSECTS. 



elFects upon the human frame ; and it is an idea not al- 

 together to be rejected, that they may concentrate into 

 a smaller compass the properties and virtues of the 

 plants upon which they feed, and thus afford medicines 

 more powerful in operation than the plants themselves. 

 It is at least worth while to institute a set of experi- 

 ments with this view. 



Medicine at the present day is indebted to an ant 

 {Formica hispinosayOlix . fungosa, F.) for a kind of lint 

 collected by that insect from the Bombax and silk cot- 

 ton-tree, wiiich as a styptic is preferable to the puff- 

 ball, and at Cayenne is successfully used to stop the 

 blood in the most violent hcemorrhages* ; and gum am- 

 moniac, according to Mr. Jackson '', oozes out of a plant 

 like fennel, from incisions made in the bark by a beetle 

 with a large horn. But with these exceptions, (in 

 which the remedy is rather collected than produced by 

 insects,) and that of spiders' webs, which are said to 

 have been recently administered with success in ague, 

 the only insects which directly supply us with medicine 

 are some species of Lytta and Mylabris. These beetles 

 how ever amply make up in efficacy for their numerical 

 insignificance ; and almost any article could be better 

 spared from the Materia Medica than one of the for- 

 mer usually known under the name of Cantharides, 

 Avhich is not only of incalculable importance as a vesi- 

 catory, but is noAv administered internally in many cases 

 with very good effect. In Europe, the only insect used 



^ Latr. Hist. Nat. des Fourmis, 48. 134. 



" Jackson's Morocco, 83. Some doubt however attaches to this state- 

 ment, from the circumstance of the figure which Mr. Jackson gives of 

 his beetle {Dibben Fashook) being clearly a mere copy of that of Mr. 

 Eruce's Zimb ! 



