250 THE INSECT PLAGUES OF THE TROPICAL WORLD 



remaining under the skin grows with redoubled vigour, and fre- 

 quently occasions a fatal inflammation. 



One of these most unwelcome intruders once entered the 

 ankle of the celebrated navigator Dampier. " I was in great 

 torment," says this entertaining traveller, "before it came 

 out. My leg and ankle swelled, and looked very angry, and 

 I kept on a plaster to bring it to 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 out about two feet." 



He afterwards had it entirely discharged by one of the 

 negroes, who applied to it a rough powder, not unlike tobacco 

 leaves, dried and crumbled very small. 



Among the plagues of Gruiana 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 Richard 

 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 affected 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 

 hobbled 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 

 Hpecies called Garapata {Ixodes sanguisuga) fixes on the legs of 



