DIKECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 65 



scarcely less painful than the sting of a bee. 1 Another, from the intole- 

 rable anguish occasioned by its bite, which resembles that produced by a 

 spark of fire and seems attended by venom, is called thejlre-ant. Captain 

 Stedman relates that this caused a whole company of soldiers to start and 

 jump about as if scalded with boiling water ; and its nests were so 

 numerous that it was not easy to avoid them. 2 We are told of a third 

 species, which emulates the scorpion in the malignity of its sting or bite. 3 

 Knox, in his account of Ceylon, mentions a black ant, called by the natives 

 Coddia, which he says " bites desperately, as bad as if a man were burnt 

 by a coal of fire ; but they are of a noble nature, and will not begin unless 

 you disturb them." The reason the Cinghalese assign for the horrible 

 pain occasioned by their bite is curious, and will serve to amuse you. 

 ** Formerly these ants went to ask a wife of the Noya, a venomous and 

 noble kind of snake ; and because they had such a high spirit to dare to 

 offer to be related to such a generous creature, they had this virtue be- 

 stowed upon them that they should sting after this manner. And if they 

 had obtained a wife of the Noya, they should have had the privilege to 

 sting full as bad as he." 4 Stedman's story of a large ant that stripped the 

 trees of their leaves, to feed, as was supposed, a blind serpent under 

 ground 5 , is somewhat akin to this : as is also another, related to me by a 

 friend of mine, of a species of Mantis, now in my cabinet, taken in one of 

 the Indian Islands, which, according to the received opinion amongst the 

 natives, was the parent of all their serpents. Whence, unless perhaps 

 from their noxious qualities, could this idea of a connexion between in- 

 sects and these reptiles be derived ? But to return from this digression 

 Madame Merian's Ant of Visitation ( Atta cephalotes) will be considered 

 in a subsequent letter : but I cannot here omit a circumstance mentioned 

 by Don Felix de Azara, a Spanish traveller, who confirms her account, 

 that these animals are so alarming and tremendous in their attacks, that if 

 they enter a house in the night, the inhabitants are obliged to rise with all 

 speed and run off in their shirts. 



I must next direct your attention to an insect, which perhaps more than 

 any other has been in every age an object of terror and abhorrence I 

 mean the redoubted scorpion. And though I shall not, with Aristotle, tell 

 you of Persian kings employing armies for several days in destroying them; 

 or, with Pliny, of countries that they have depopulated ; yet my account 

 will not be devoid of that species of interest which the dread of its power 

 to do us injury imparts to any object. Could you see one of these fero- 

 cious animals, perhaps a foot in length, a size to which they sometimes 

 attain, advancing towards you in their usual menacing attitude, with its 

 claws expanded, and its many -jointed tail turned over its head ; were your 

 heart ever so stout, I think you would start back and feel a horror come 

 across you ; and though you knew not the animal, you would conclude 

 that such an aspect of malignity must be the precursor of malignant effects. 

 Nor would you be mistaken, as you will presently see. This alarming 

 animal, though, like hymenopterous insects, it is armed with a sting, is in 

 no respect related to that order, and forms the only genus, at present 

 known, of the others that is so armed. Even its sting is totally different 



1 Hawkesworth's Cook, iii. 223. * Stedman, ii. 94. 



5 Bingley, iii. 385. first edit. * Knox's Ceylon, 24* B Stedman, ii. 142. ' 



I* 



