BETE EOUGE. 227 



taining traveller, 'before it came out. My leg and ankle 

 swelled, and looked very angry, and I kept on a plaster to 

 bring it to a head. At last, drawing off my plaster, out came 

 three inches of the worm, and my pain abated. Till that time 

 I was ignorant of my malady, and a gentleman at whose house 

 I was took it for a nerve ; but I knew well what it was, and 

 presently rolled it up on a small stick. After this I opened the 

 place every morning and evening, and strained the worm out 

 gently, about two inches at a time — not without some pain — 

 till I had at length got it out.' 



Among the plagues of Guiana and the West Indies we must 

 not forget a little insect in the grass and on the shrubs, which 

 the French call bete-rouge. It is of a beautiful scarlet colour, 

 and so minute that you must bring your eye close to it before 

 you can perceive it. It abounds most in the rainy season. 

 Its bite causes an intolerable itching, which, according to Kichard 

 Schomburgk, who writes from personal experience, drives by 

 day the perspiration of anguish from every pore, and at night 

 makes one's hammock resemble the gridiron on which Saint 

 Lawrence was roasted. The best way to get rid of the plague 

 is to rub the part afifected with lemon-juice or rum. ' You must 

 be careful not to scratch it,' says Waterton. ' If you do so and 

 break the skin, you expose yourself to a sore. The first year I 

 was in Gruiana the bete-rouge and my own want of knowledge, 

 and, I may add, the little attention I paid to it, created an 

 ulcer above the ankle which annoyed me for six months, and if I 

 ] lobbied out into the grass, a number of bete-rouges would settle 

 on the edges of the sore and increase the inflammation.' 



The blood-sucking Ticks are also to be classed among the in- 

 tolerable nuisances of many tropical regions. A large American 

 species called Grarapata (/a^cxies sanguisuga) fixes on the legs of 

 travellers, and gradually buries its whole head in the skin, which 

 the body, disgustingly distended with blood, is unable to follow. 

 On being violently removed, the former remains in the wound, 

 and often produces painful sores. The Indians returning in the 

 evening from the forest or from their field labour generally 

 bring some of these creatures along with them, swollen to the 

 size of hazel- nuts. 



Though countless hosts of ticks infest the Ceylonese jungle, 

 though mosquitoes without number swarm over the lower 



Q 2 



