INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 175 



than the common cock-roach, adding an incessant noise to its ravages ; 

 since, although for a short time, it may not be unpleasant to hear 



" the cricket chirrup in the hearth," 



SO constant a din every evening must very much interrupt comfort and 

 conversation. These garrulous animals, which live in a kind of artificial 

 torrid zone, are very tiiirsty souls, and are frequently found -drowned in 

 pans of water, milk, broth, and the like. Whatever is moist, even stock- 

 ings or linen hung out to dry, is to them a bonne bouche ; they will eat 

 the scummings of pots, yeast, crumbs of bread, and even salt, or any thing 

 within their reach. Sometimes they are so abundant in houses as to 

 become absolute pests, flying into the candles and into people's faces. 



At Cuddapa, in the ceded districts to the northward of Mysore, Captain 

 Green was much annoyed by a jumping insect, which from his description, 

 I should take for the larva of a species of cricket. They were of a dun 

 color, and from half to three fourths of an inch in length. They abounded 

 at night, and were very injurious to papers and books, which they both 

 discolored and devoured ; leather also was eaten by them. Such was their 

 boldness and avidity, that they attacked the exposed parts of the body 

 when you were asleep, nibbling the ends of the fingers, particularly the 

 skin under the nails, which was only discoverable by a slight soreness that 

 succeeded. So great was their agility that they could seldom be caught 

 or crushed. They were a mute insect, but probably the imago would 

 make noise enough. 



But the white ants, wherever they prevail, are a still worse plague than 

 either of these insects — they are the great calamity, as Linne terms them, 

 of both the Indies. When they find their way into houses or warehouses, 

 nothing less hard than metal or glass escapes their ravages. Their favorite 

 food, however, is wood of all kinds, except the teak {Tectona grandis) 

 and iron-wood (^SideroxyJon), which are the only sorts known that they 

 will not touch^ ; and so infinite are the multitudes of the assailants, and 

 such is the excellence of their tools, that all the timber-work of a spacious 

 apartment is often destroyed by them in a few nights. Exteriorly, how- 

 ever, every thing appears as if untouched ; for these wary depredators, 

 and this is what constitutes the greatest singularity of their history, carry 

 on all their operations by sap and mine, destroying first the inside of solid 

 substances, and scarcely ever attacking their outside, until first they have 

 concealed it and their operations with a coat of clay. A general similarity 

 runs through the proceedings of the whole tribe ; but the large African 

 species (called by Smeathman Termes beUicosus), T. fatalis, is the most 

 formidable. These insects live in large clay nests, from whence they 

 excavate tunnels all round, often to the extent of several hundred feet; 

 from these they will descend a considerable depth below the foundation of 

 a house, and rise again through the floors ; or, boring through the posts 

 and supports of the building, enter the roof, and construct there their galle- 



' It is not its hardness that protects the teali, as the Asiatic Terwiito attack Lignum Vitse, 

 but probably some essential oil disagreeable to them with which it is impregnated. This is 

 the more likely, since they will eat it when it is old and has been long exposed to the air. 

 Tannin has been conjectured to be the protecting substance, but erroneously, as leather of 

 every kind is devoured by them. (Williamson's East India Vade Mecum, ii. 56.) It is its 

 hardness probably that pi-otects the iron -wood from the African Termites. (Smeathman in 

 Philos. Trans. 1781, 11. 47.) 



