DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 43 



conspicuous in the injuries which they occasion, for nothing in nature that 

 possesses or has possessed animal or vegetable life is safe from their 

 inroads. Neither the cunning of the fox, nor the swiftness of the horse or 

 deer, nor the strength of the buffalo, nor the ferocity of the lion or tiger, 

 nor the armour of the rhinoceros, nor the giant bulk or sagacity of the 

 elephant, nor even the authority of imperial man, who boasts himself to be 

 the lord of all, can secure them from becoming a prey to these despised 

 beings. The air affords no protection to the birds, nor the water to the 

 fish ; insects pursue them all to their most secret conclaves and strongest 

 citadels, and compel them to submit to their sway. Flora's empire is still 

 more exposed to their cruel domination and ravages ; and there is scarcely 

 one of her innumerable subjects, from the oak, the glory of the forest, to 

 the most minute lichen that grows upon its trunk, that is not destined to 

 be the food of these next to nonentities in our estimation. And when life 

 departs from man, the inferior animals, or vegetables, they become univer- 

 sally, sooner or later, the inheritance of insects. 



I shall principally bespeak your attention to the injuries in question as 

 they affect ourselves. These may be divided into direct and indirect. By 

 direct injuries I mean every species of attack upon our own persons ; and 

 by indirect, such as are made upon our property. To the former of these 

 I shall confine myself in the present letter. 



Insects, as to their direct attacks upon us, may be arranged in three 

 principal classes. Those, namely, which seek to make us their food ; 

 those whose object is to prevent or revenge an injury which they either 

 fear, or have received from us; and those which indeed offer us no 

 violence, but yet incommode us extremely in other ways. 



I hope I shall not too much offend your delicacy if I begin the first class 

 of our insect assailants with a very disgusting genus, which Providence 

 seems to have created to punish inattention to personal cleanliness. But 

 though this pest of man must not be wholly passed over, yet, since it is 

 unfortunately too well known, it will not be at all necessary for me to 

 enlarge upon its history. I shall only mention one fact which shows the 

 astonishingly rapid increase of these animals, where they have once gotten 

 possession. It is a vulgar notion, that a louse in twenty-four hours may 

 see two generations ; but this is rather overshooting the mark. Leeuwen- 

 hoek, whose love for science overcame the nausea that such creatures are 

 apt to excite, proves that their nits or eggs are not hatched till the eighth 

 day after they are laid, and that they do not themselves commence laying 

 before they are a month old. He ascertained, however, that a single 

 female louse may, in eight weeks, witness the birth of five thousand 

 descendants. 1 You remember how wolves were extirpated frpm this 

 country, but perhaps never suspected any monarch of imposing a tribute 

 of lice upon his subjects. Yet we are gravely told that in Mexico and 

 Peru such a jpo//-tax was exacted, and that bags full of these treasures 

 were found in the palace of Montezuma ! ! ! 2 Were our own taxes paid in 

 such coin, what little grumbling would there be! 



Two other species of this genus, besides the common louse, are, in this 



4 



1 Leemv. Epist. 98. 1696. 



2 Bingley, Anim. Biogr. first edition, iii. 437. St. Pierre's Studies, &c., i. 312. 



