DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 315 



that they may concentrate into a smaller compass the 

 properties and virtues of the plants upon which they 

 feed, and thus afford medicines more powerful in opera- 

 tion than the plants themselves. It is at least worth 

 while to institute a set of experiments with this view. 



Medicine at the present day is indebted to an ant 

 (Formica bispinosa, Oliv. fungosa, F.) for a kind of lint 

 collected by that insect from the Bombax or silk cotton- 

 tree, which as a styptic is preferable to the puff-ball, and 

 at Cayenne is successfully used to stop the blood in the 

 most violent haemorrhages 3 ; and gum ammoniac, ac- 

 cording to Mr. Jackson b , oozes out of a plant like fen- 

 nel, from incisions made in the bark by a beetle with a 

 large horn. But with these exceptions, (in which the 

 remedy is rather collected than produced by insects,) and 

 that of spiders' webs, which are said to have been re- 

 cently administered with success in ague, the only insects 

 which directly supply us with medicine are some species 

 of Cantharis and Mylabris. These beetles however 

 amply make up in efficacy for their numerical insig- 

 nificance; and almost any article could be better spared 

 from the Materia Medica than one of the former usually 

 known under the name of Cantharides, which is not only 

 of incalculable importance as a vesicatory, but is now 

 administered internally in many cases with very good ef- 

 fect. In Europe, the only insect used with this view is 

 the Cantharis vesicatoria ; but in America the C. cinerea 

 and vittata (which are extremely common and noxious 

 insects, while the C, vesicatoria is sold there at sixteen 



a Latr. Hist. Nat. des Fourmis, 48. 134. 



b Jackson's Morocco, 83. Some doubt however attaches to this 

 statement, from the circumstance of the figure which Mr. Jackson 

 gives of his beetle (Dibben Fashook) being clearly a mere copy of that 

 of Mr. Bruce's Zimb ! 



