CANTHARIDES. 155 



Europe is the cantharis vesicatoria, for the most 

 part rare in England, but seen on some occasions in 

 great numbers, as in the summer of 1837 in Essex, 

 Suffolk, and the Isle of Wight. Other insects of 

 the same family are employed in foreign countries. 



The true blistering beetle has complete wings 

 and wing cases ; its body is long and narrow, 

 varying in size, but in general about nine lines 

 long and two or three lines wide. It is of a rich 

 green and golden colour, very shining and deli- 

 cately punctured, with the antennae black, except 

 the first joint. 



" The cantharis is one of those insects which 

 have been most anciently and most universally 

 known. Physicians, who were the first natural 

 philosophers, and the first observers of nature, 

 have made mention of the cantharides in the re- 

 motest times. But they have only considered 

 them under that relation which was most suitable 

 to their own profession, and as furnishing to 

 medicine one of its most powerful agents. The 

 naturalist, who is less anxious about becoming 

 acquainted with the medicinal virtues of the dead, 



