232 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



Drugs and medicines also, though often so nauseous 

 to us, form occasionally part of the food of insects. A 

 small beetle (Sinodendrum pusillum*) eats the roots of 

 rhubarb, in which I detected it in the East India Com- 

 pany's warehouses. Opium is a dainty morceau to the 

 white ants b ; and, what is more extraordinary, Anobium 

 pamceum c (a coleopterous insect that preys naturally 

 upon wood) has been known to devour the blister-beetle. 

 Swammerdam amongst his treasures mentions " a de- 

 testable beetle," produced from a worm that eats the 

 roots of ginseng ; and he likewise notices another, the 

 larva of which devours the bag of the musk d . The co- 

 chineal at Rio de Janeiro is the prey of an insect resem- 

 bling an Ichneumon, but furnished with only two wings ; 

 its station is in the cotton that envelops the Coccus. Pre- 

 vious to its assumption of the pupa it ejects a large glo- 

 bule of pure red colouring matter 6 . And lastly, the Coc- 

 cus that produces the lac (C. Lacca) is, we are told, de- 

 voured by various insects f . 



Perhaps you imagine that these universal destroyers 

 spare at least our garments, in which you may at first 

 conceive there can be nothing very tempting to excite 

 even the appetite of an insect. Your housekeeper, how- 

 ever, would probably tell you a different story, and en- 

 large upon the trouble and pains it costs her to guard 



a Ptlnus piceiiSy Marsh. 



b On examining ninety-two chests of opium, part of the cargo saved 

 from the Charlton, previously to reshipping them from Chittagong 

 for China, thirteen were found to he full of white ants, which had 

 almost wholly devoured the opium. Article from Chittagong, Nov. 

 1812, in one of the Newspapers, July 31, 1813. 



c Ptinus rubcllus, Marsh. d Sibl. Nat. I 125. b. 126. a. 



e Sir Geo. Staunton's Voy. 8vo. 189. 



' Kerr in Phihs Trans. 1/81. 



