206 HABITS AND INSTINCTS OP ANIMALS. CHAP. VI. 



Joel declares,, are the armies of the Almighty, mar- 

 shalled hy him, and by his irresistible command im- 

 pelled to the work of destruction : where He directs 

 them, they lay waste the earth ; and famine and pesti- 

 lence follow in their train." * 



(220.) INSECTS, as to their direct attacks upon us, 

 may be arranged, as these authors observe, under three 

 principal divisions. Under the first we may class those 

 which seek to make us their food ; ttie second are such 

 as revenge our intentional or unintentional provocation ; 

 and the third comprises those which, without offering 

 us violence, nevertheless incommode us exceedingly in 

 other ways. The first sort of these injuries are the 

 most important, and will claim our chief attention. 



(221.) Man, like all created beings, is doomed to fur- 

 nish nourishment, from his own body, to various detested 

 parasites, which either affix themselves upon the surface 

 of his skin, or reside within his flesh. The disgusting 

 genus Pediculus, or louse (Jig. 

 62 A\ V it ^ 2 -)> belongs to the first de- 

 scription. Providence seems to 

 have created this pest to pun- 

 ish inattention to personal clean- 

 liness. This insect increases so 

 prodigiously, that Leeuwenhoek 

 states, " a single female may, in 

 eight weeks, witness the birth of 

 five thousand descendants." We 

 may remark that this disgust- 

 ing insect is most common 

 in the South of Italy, where heat of climate and per- 

 sonal dirt are greater than in any other part of Europe. 

 We are inclined, also, to believe it peculiar to Eu- 

 ropeans, or, rather, whites ; for, although the poorer 

 class of Portuguese Brazilians swarm with lice, we 

 never saw them hunted on the woolly heads of the 

 African negroes. Whether the disease named Phthi- 

 riasis by the ancients, originated from lice, mites, or 



* Int. to Ent. vol. i. p. 82, 



