•274 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



housekeeper knows that no place of security is inaccessible 

 to the innumerable ants. My watch stopped one night; 

 and when 1 took it to the watch-maker he took a small 

 ant from among the wheels, which had availed itself of 

 the narrow opening left for the spring to work in, to 

 squeeze itself into the watch and taste the fine oil with 

 which the works were lubricated. Almost every evening 

 hundreds of small insects of all orders find their death 

 in every lamp ; innumerable Coleoptera fly into lighted 

 dwellings, whose nearest relations in the temperate zone 

 also possess wings, but very rarely use them ; as well as a 

 harmless but very troublesome Gryllotalpa, much dreaded by 

 ladies, which resembles Sphinx convolvuli in its reckless 

 flight. Who has not been disturbed at supper-(ime in the 

 East Indies by swarms of termites suddenly flying in and 

 out } or, still worse, by ill-smelling Orihoptera f* or the 

 intolerable itching caused by the species of Lepidoptera 

 mentioned above ? Who has not been compelled, by the 

 ravages of termites or cockroaches in linen chest or library, 

 to utter the socialistic wish that he had no private property ? 

 And above all, among those who cannot always remain in 

 the better arranged dwellings of large towns, who does not 

 remember those never-to-be-forgotten Indian nights, in which 

 poets and lovers might have revelled, but when wearied men 

 who wanted sleep were plagued by blood-sucking mosquitoes, 

 crawling ants and other insects, as if by actual demon 

 tormentors } 



Let me relate a single night's experience, which may 

 serve as a small contribution to the still unknown life-history 

 of an Indian insect : — One night I was asleep at Batavia, 

 thinking myself well protected by my mosquito-curtain, when 

 1 was awakened by a noise. On waking up I heard a buzzing 

 as if my room was turned into a great beehive. My night- 

 light was extinguished, probably by the insects which I 

 heard in ray room having flown into it; but a little light from 

 a gas-lamp coming through the window showed me the 

 outside of my while mosquito-curtain covered with insects, 

 which seemed to be some kind of wasps. Of course I had no 

 wish to leave my place of protection; but 1 soon saw that 

 my mosquito-curtain was not so well closed as I had thought, 

 and that some of the dreaded animals had already discovered 



