4474 Insects. 



of the black species called or known here as the hnll-dog ant* 

 Well, the digger, after his day's work is over, goes home expecting 

 to enjoy a comfortable evening after the annoyances of the day, and, 

 supper over, composes himself with a soothing pipe. But this is just 

 the time when the mosquitoes are getting lively, and the poor devil 

 is at last driven to the recesses of his tent and blankets, where he 

 thinks he may reasonably hope for a little rest, provided no attempt is 

 made to stick him up by bushrangers, for whose benefit he takes care 

 to lay his revolver under his pillow. Here again he is disappointed. 

 There is a small insect, which in England sometimes haunts what 

 should be the couch of repose, and those are happiest who have least 

 acquaintance with it. The same murderers of sleep exist here, 

 greater in size as might be expected, the climate being so favourable 

 to animal life, but come not in single files or in battalions, but 

 b}' whole armies ! The poor exhausted digger wages war with these 

 blood-thirsty miscreants, until, weary with toil and faint from loss of 

 blood, he sinks into a troubled slumber. Presently a strange dog ap- 

 pears on the Diggins. This fact is at once noticed by some resident 

 canine attached to a tent (every tent almost has its dog), the alarm is 

 given, and soon the whole "flat" resounds with the most awful bark- 

 ings and yellings which the canine throat and lungs are capable of 

 producing. Roused by the noise, the digger, apostrophising the ani- 

 mals in no measured terras, waits, as patiently as he can be expected 

 to do under the circumstances, until it subsides, and then sinks on his 

 pillow once more. Soon the tinkle of an old tin- kettle is heard, and 

 a horse, to whose neck it is chained and padlocked, comes snorting 

 and champing around the tent, cropping the grass, stumbling over the 

 tent-ropes, and almost pulling it down. And thus the night passes ; 

 often diversified by the pranks of the mice, who nibble everything in 

 the shape of eatables they can find, and seem to consider the recum- 

 bant a sort of play-ground for them to scamper over at their pleasure. 

 This is really no exaggeration. These nuisances, and many more 

 which 1 could detail, we have suffered and do suffer from, daily and 

 nightly. For my part I have had enough of Zoology in general, and 

 Entomology in particular, to serve me for my life. Any charm the 

 latter once had for me is among the things that were. 



January 23rd, 1853. — We have had heavy storms of rain and 

 whirlwinds of dust — perfect sandstones, and the flies are enough to 



* Mr. Smith, of the British Museum, has obligingly named this insect Myimecia 

 pyriformis ; the red one, before alluded to, is M. gulosa. 



