188 NATURAL HISTORY. [CH. XII. 



distance of a hundred and fifty miles from the 

 coast. 



The species which is termed the wart-eating lo- 

 cust has earned its name from the fact of the com- 

 mon people of Sweden catching them for the pur- 

 pose of destroying warts on the hand and elsewhere. 

 The creature is made to bite the excrescence, and 

 at the same time it discharges an acrid liquor on it. 

 The mode of cure would doubtlessly be efficacious, 

 provided the insect does bite and does discharge 

 the corrosive fluid, for it is well known that me- 

 chanical or chymical injuries to a part possessed of 

 such a low degree of vitality as a wart speedily kill 

 it, and cause it to drop off. The prickly grasshop- 

 per, however, would answer the purpose most ef- 

 fectually, if we are to credit Mr. Jackson's account 

 of the powers of its teeth. " I have" (in India) says 

 he, " caught some locusts of an extraordinary size, 

 and very thick in proportion to their length. They 

 have no wings, move slowly, and are easily taken. 

 I soon found it necessary to be careful that they 

 did not bite me, for I am persuaded they could 

 easily have bitten my finger to the bone. I tried 

 one with a twig about as thick as a quill, which it 

 bit through instantly. I then dissected one, and on 

 examining one of its grinders, found it nearly as 

 large as a human tooth, and so hard that I was not 

 able to make any impression on it with my pen- 

 knife. The grinders were nearly the colour of ma- 

 hogany. Finding that we were not molested by 

 flies or other insects, and ascribing this circum- 

 stance to the excessive heat of the sun at this sea- 

 son, I made the experiment on one of these large 

 locusts by exposing it to the sun, which actually 

 killed it in less than an hour. I also found that flies, 

 when exposed in the middle of the day, fell down 

 almost instantly, and that all kinds of insects must 

 either get into some shade or inevitably perish." 



The females of this kind of insect possess an 



