THE BUGS. 



I2 7 



devil, or anything of that sort. It is commonly in. use 

 among ayahs and bearers, to keep children in awe when 

 they are disposed to be "nattee" i.e., disobedient and 

 naturally all sorts of ugly insects come to be in practice 

 the commonest sorts of " bows." That these were also the 

 commonest kinds of bugs in England in the days of the 

 Pilgrim Fathers I argue from the meaning which the word 

 bears in the American language to this day. It was an 

 American who described the elephant beetle as an "al- 

 mighty big bug," and in that country, I understand, there 

 are not only squash-bugs, potato-bugs, corn-bugs, &c., but 

 bugs which spin us silk, and bugs from which lac and 

 cochineal are obtained. In England, as we all know, the 

 word has entirely lost both its primary meaning of a goblin 

 and its second sense, in which it stood in a general way for 

 any sort of insect, and is often confined not only to a sub- 

 division of the order Hemiptera, but to one particular 

 species of the genus cimex, known to naturalists as Cimex 

 lectiilarius. This is a fate to which words are very subject. 

 Corn is no longer used in America for anything but Indian 

 corn or maize, while in Scotland it has a more or less spe- 

 cial application to oats. In England there are two or three 

 peculiar birds which pass under the name of " ousel," as the 



