OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 49 



moxys (S. calcitrans]\ and on a second examination you 

 will find that, however alike in most respects, they differ 

 widely in the shape of their proboscis ; that of the Sto- 

 moxys being a horny sharp-pointed weapon, capable of 

 piercing the flesh, while the soft blunt organ of the Musca 

 is perfectly incompetent to any such operation. In future, 

 while you no longer load the whole race of the house-fly 

 with the execrations which properly belong to a quite 

 different tribe, you will cease being surprised that an 

 ordinary description should be insufficient to discriminate 

 an insect. It is to this insufficiency that we must attri- 

 bute our ignorance of so many of the insects mentioned 

 by the older naturalists, previously to the systematic im- 

 provements of the immortal Linne: and to the same cause 

 we must refer the impossibility of determining what spe- 

 cies are alluded to in the accounts of many modern travel- 

 lers and agriculturists who have been ignorant of En- 

 tomology as a science. Instances without number of 

 this impossibility might be adduced, but I shall confine 

 myself to two. 



One of the greatest pests of Surinam and other low re- 

 gions in South America, is the insect called in the West 

 Indies, where it is also troublesome, the chigoe (Pulex 

 penetrans\ a minute species, to the attacks of which I 

 shall again have occasion to advert. This insect is men- 

 tioned by almost all the writers on the countries where it 

 is found. Not less than eight or ten of them have endea- 

 voured to give a full description of it, and some of them 

 have even figured it ; arid yet, strange to say, it was not 

 certainly known whether it was a flea (Pulex, L.) or a 

 mite (Acarus, L.), till a competent naturalist undertook 

 to investigate its history, and in a short paper in the 



VOL. I. E 



