130 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



manure four or five acres every year with dead flies. 

 I have been much surprised that the late learned Mr. 

 Harmer should think it odd to find, by writers who 

 treated of southern climates, that driving away flies was 

 an object of importance. Had he been with me in Spain 

 and in Languedoc in July and August, he would have 

 been very far from thinking there was any thing odd 

 in it a ." 



Our friend Captain Green, of the sixth regiment of 

 the East India Company's native troops, relates to me, 

 that in India, when the mangoes are ripe, which is the 

 hottest part of the summer, a very minute black fly 

 makes its appearance, which, because it flies in swarms 

 into the eyes, is very troublesome, and causes much 

 pain, is called there the eye-fly. At this season the eyes 

 are attacked by a disease, supposed to be occasioned by 

 eating tbe mangoes, but more probably the result of the 

 irritation produced by the fly in question, which, how- 

 ever, they admit, carries the infection from one person 

 to another. 



You know that the hairs taken from the pods of Doll- 

 chos pruriens and urens, L., commonly called Cowkage 

 and Cow-itch b , occasion a most violent itching, but per- 

 haps are not aware that those of the caterpillars of se- 

 veral Moths will produce the same disagreeable effect. 

 One of these is the procession moth, (Lasiocampa pro- 

 cessioned) of which Reaumur has given so interesting 



a Young's Travels in France, i. 298. These flies are equally trou- 

 blesome and tormenting in Sweden. See Amcen. Acad. iii. 343. 



b Cowhage has been administered with success as an anthelminthic, 

 as has likewise spun glass pounded ; the spicula of these substances 

 destroying the worms. The hair of the caterpillars here alluded to, 

 and perhaps also of the larva of Euprepia Caja, (the Tiger-Moth,) 

 might probably be equally efficacious. 



