IN THE INSECT WORLD. 349 



THE HARVEST BUG. 



" I very much wish," said my friend T. to me one day, " to 



buy a small estate in the vicinity of Forest. If there 



should be one to sell, pray let me know of it." 



It was not long before an opportunity arose for my friend to 

 satisfy his desire. But after I had made him acquainted with 

 it, he declared himself no longer willing to purchase a property 

 in a district where, as he had learned, one was devoured by 

 red beasts all through the finest months of the year. What a 

 frightful neighbourhood to live in, where you were forbidden to 

 walk in your garden under pain of catching an itch in your 

 legs! 



Unquestionably, it is only too true that the cultivated ground, 

 whether on the northern or the southern slope of the forest, 

 is infested, from the beginning of summer to the beginning of 

 winter, by Lilliputian horrors, like so many tiny red points, 

 which cling obstinately to the skin, and there deposit, under 

 the epidermis, their microscopic brood. Once planted there, 

 the rougets, as the French call them, or harvest bugs, as we 

 English call them, effect considerable mischief; and if, to 

 relieve one's self, one indulges in " a scratch," the cutaneous 

 surface is quickly covered by small blisters, which on a cursory 

 examination might be taken for a skin affection not generally 

 named in polite hearing. 



But one does not perceive the galleries excavated by these 

 annoying insects, positive tunnels or covered ways, through 

 which they proceed to pour forth elsewhere the superfluity of 



