DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 128 



the malignity of its sting or bite a . Knox, in his account 

 of Ceylon, mentions a black ant, called by the natives 

 Coddta, which he says " bites desperately, as bad as if 

 a man were burnt by a coal of fire ; but they are of 

 a noble nature, and will not begin unless you disturb 

 them." The reason the Cinghalese assign for the hor- 

 rible pain occasioned by their bite is curious, and will 

 serve to amuse you. " Formerly these ants went to 

 ask a wife of the Noya, a venomous and noble kind of 

 snake ; and because they had such a high spirit to dare 

 to offer to be related to such a generous creature, they 

 had this virtue bestowed upon them, that they should 

 sting after this manner. And if they had obtained a wife 

 of the Noya, they should have had the privilege to sting 

 full as bad as he b ." Stedman's story of a large ant that 

 stripped the trees of their leaves, to feed, as was sup- 

 posed, a blind serpent under ground c , is somewhat akin 

 to this : as is also another, related to me by a friend of 

 mine, of a species of Mantis, now in my cabinet, taken 

 in one of the Indian islands, which, according to the 

 received opinion amongst the natives, was the parent of 

 all their serpents. Whence, unless perhaps from their 

 noxious qualities, could this idea of a connexion between 

 insects and these reptiles be derived ? But to return 

 from this digression Madame Merian's Ant of Visi- 

 tation (CEcodoma cephalotes) will be considered in a sub- 

 sequent letter : but I cannot here omit a circumstance 

 mentioned by Don Felix de Azara, a late Spanish tra- 

 veller, who confirms her account, that these animals 

 are so alarming and tremendous in their attacks, that if 



a Btngley, iii. 385, first edit. b Knox's Ceylon, 24. 



c Stedman, ii. 142. 



