100 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



Stung by an Ichneumon ; first by one with a concaftled sting, and after- 

 wards by another of the family of Pimpla Manifestator, with a very long 

 exserted one. I had held the insect by its sting, which it withdrew from 

 between my fingers with surprising force, and then, as if in revenge, stung 

 me. Pompilus viadcus, one of the spider-wasps, once, in this way, gave 

 me acute pain. Mr. W. S. Mac Leay states that at the Havana he was 

 once stung by a gigantic pompilus (probably P. Heros), from which he 

 suffered a very short-lived pain, but the wound bled as if punctured by a 

 pin. The bleeding, he conjectures, carried off the venom. But the 

 insects which in this respect principally attract our notice by exciting our 

 fears, are the hive-bee, the wasp, and the hornet. The first of these, the 

 bee, sometimes manifests an antipathy to particular individuals, whom it 

 attacks and wounds without provocation ; but the two last, though appa- 

 rently the most formidable, are not so ill-tempered as they are conceived 

 to be, seldom molesting those who do not first interfere with or disturb 

 them. We learn from Scripture that the hornet (but whether it was the 

 common species is uncertain) was employed by Providence to drive out 

 the impious inhabitants of Canaan, or subdue them under the hands of the 

 Israelites.^ — The effect produced by the sting of these animals is different 

 in different persons. To some they occasion only a very slight inconve- 

 nience or a momentary pain ; others feel the smart of the wounds which 

 they inflict for several days, and are thrown into fevers by them ; and to 

 some they have even proved fatal.- Yet these insects are certainly, in 

 general, but a trifling evil. They become, however, especially xvasps, a 

 very serious one to many, from the mere dread of being stung by them, 

 even though they should not carry their fears to the same length with the 

 lady mentioned by Dr. Fairfax"', in the Philosophical Transactions, who 

 had such a horror of them that during the season in which they abound in 

 houses, she always confined herself to her apartment. An insect of a 

 tribe never before suspected of being endowed with such a mode of annoy- 

 ance, one of the order Lejjidoptera, found at the Cape of Good Hope, is 

 said to defend itself when captured by stinging, whence it is there named 

 the Bee-moth and it is added that the puncture, which'is very painful, is 

 speedily followed by swelling and inflammation.^ 



Ants are insects of this order, which, though our indigenous species may 

 be regarded as harmless, in some countries are gifted with double means 

 of annoyance, both from their sting and their bite. A green kind in New 

 South Wales was observed by Sir Joseph Banks to inflict a wound scarcely 

 less painful than the sting of a bee.^ Another, from the intolerable an- 

 guish occasioned by its bite, which resembles that produced by a spark of 

 fire and seems attended by venom, is called the Jire-ant. Captain Sted- 

 man relates that this caused a whole company of soldiers to start and 

 jump about as if scalded with boiling water; and its nests were so nume- 

 rous that it was not easy to avoid them.^ We are told of a third species, 

 which emulates the scorpion in the malignity of its sting or bite.' Knox, 

 in his account of Ceylon, mentions a black ant, called by the natives 



' Deut. vii. 20. Josh, x.viv. 12. * Amoreux, 242. ^ phUos. Trans, i. 201. 



■• Olcca's Isis, 1831, p. 1917., from a letter received by Dr. Reich, from the Cape of Good 

 Hope, quoted in Burmeisler's Manual of Ent. p. 381. 



* Hawkesworth's Cook, iii. 223. 



* Stedman, ii. 94. ' Bingley, iii. 385. first edit. 



