INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 241 



latter, whose singular gliding larva, when once it gets 

 amongst them, makes astonishing havoc, the birds soon 

 shedding their feathers, and the insects falling to pieces. 

 Mr. W. S. MacLeay informs me that at the Havana it is 

 exceedingly difficult to preserve insects, &c., as the ants 

 devour every thing. One of the worst plagues of the 

 entomologist is a mite (Acarus Destructor, Schrank) : 

 this, if his specimens be at all damp, eats up all the 

 muscular parts, (Cantharis vesicatoria being almost the 

 only insect that is not to its taste,) and thus entirely 

 destroys them. If spiders by any means get amongst 

 them, they will do no little mischief. Some I have ob- 

 served to be devoured by a minute moth, perhaps Tinea 

 Insectella ; and in the posterior thighs of a species of 

 Locusta from China, I once found, one in each thigh, a 

 small beetle congenerous with Antherophagus pollens, 

 that had devoured the interior. It is, I believe, either 

 Acarus Destructor or Cheyletus eruditus that eats the gum 

 employed to fasten down dried plants. 



There are other insects which do not confine them- 

 selves to one or two articles, but make a general and 

 indiscriminate attack upon our dead stock. Ulloa men- 

 tions one peculiar to Carthagena, called there the come- 

 gen, which he describes as a kind of moth or maggot so 

 minute as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye a . This 

 destroys, says he, the furniture of houses, particularly 

 all kinds of hangings, whether of cloth, linen, or silk, 

 gold or silver stuffs or lace ; in short, every thing except 

 solid metal. It will in a single night ruin all the goods 

 of a warehouse in which it has got footing, reducing bales 



a It appears from Humboldt (Personal Narrative, E. T. v. 116.) 

 that the destructive insects called by this name, are Termites. 

 YOL. I. R 



