DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 79 



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 

 armor 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 universally, 

 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 Provi- 

 dence 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. Leeu- 

 wenhoek, 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 

 eight 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.^ You remember how wolves were extirpated from 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 poll-iz^ was exacted, and that bags full of these treasures 

 were found in the palace of Montezuma ! ! !^ 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 



> Leeuw. Epist. 98. 1696. 



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



