104 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



animals get upon the linen and cover it in a moment; 

 afterwards they insinuate themselves into the skin and 

 occasion a most intolerable itching. They are with dif- 

 ficulty extracted, and leave behind them large livid tu- 

 mours, which subside in a day or two. An insect very 

 tormenting to the wood-cutters and the settlers on the 

 Mosquito shore and the bay of Honduras, and called 

 by them the doctor, is thought to be synonymous with 

 this a . More serious consequences have been known to 

 follow the bite of another mite related to the above, if 

 not the same species, common in Martinique, and called 

 there the Bete rouge. When our soldiers in camp were 

 attacked by this animal, dangerous ulcers succeeded 

 the symptoms just mentioned, which, in several cases, 

 became so bad, that the limb affected was obliged to be 

 taken off b . 



I was once collecting insects in Norwood, near Lon- 

 don, when my hands were covered by a number of small 

 hungry ticks, which were so greedy after blood, that 

 they penetrated deep into my flesh, giving me no little 

 pain ; and it was not without difficulty that I extracted 

 them. I suspect that this was the dog-tick (Ixodes 

 Ricinus) which is often found on plants ; but I am not 

 certain, as I neglected to examine it, my attention at that 

 time being almost wholly given to Coleoptera. Lyonnet 

 seems to have been attacked, in one of his entomological 

 excursions, by the same or a similar insect, which he 

 broke, so firmly had it fixed itself, in endeavouring to 

 extract it ; and he was obliged to lay open the place lest 



* Lindley in the Royal Military Chronicle for March 1815, p. 459. 

 b I owe this information to the late Robinson Kittoe, Esq. for- 

 merly clerk of the Cheque in the King's Yard, Woolwich, 



