DIRECT IN J TRIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 1 23 



a man were burnt by a coal of fire ; but they are of a 

 noble nature, and will not begin unless you disturb 

 them." The reason the Cinghalese assign for the hor- 

 rible pain occasioned by their bite is curious, and will 

 serve to amuse you. " Formerly these ants went to 

 ask a wife of the Not/a, a venomous and noble kind of 

 snake ; and because they had such a high spirit to dare 

 to offer to be related to such a generous creature, they 

 had this virtue bestowed upon_ them, that they should 

 sting after this manner. And if they had obtained a wife 

 of the Noya, they should have had the privilege to sting 

 full as bad as he a . Stedman's story of a large ant that 

 stripped the trees of their leaves, to feed, as was sup- 

 posed, a blind serpent under ground 5 , is somewhat akin 

 to this : as is also another, related to me by a friend of 

 mine, of a species of Mantis, now in my cabinet, taken 

 in one of the Indian islands, which, according to the 

 received opinion amongst the natives, was the parent 

 of all their serpents. Whence, unless perhaps from 

 their noxious qualities, could this idea of a connexion 

 between insects and these reptiles be derived? But 



to ret urn from this digression Madame Merian's 



Ant of Visitation will be considered in a subsequent let- 

 ter : but I cannot here omit a circumstance mentioned 

 by Don Felix de Azara, a late Spanish traveller, who 

 confirms her account, — that these animals are so alarm- 

 ing and tremendous in their attacks, that if they enter 

 a house in the night, the inhabitants are obliged to rise 

 with all speed and run off in their shirts. 



I must next direct your attention to an insect, which 

 perhaps more than any other has in every age been an 

 object of terror and abhorrence— I mean the redoubted 

 * Knox's Ceylon, 24. h Stednian, ii. 142, 



