DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 129 



body produced a sensation of this kind that was worse 

 than pain. 



The common house-fly is with us often sufficiently 

 annoying at the close of summer ; but we know nothing 

 of it as a tormentor compared with the inhabitants of 

 southern Europe. — " I met (says Arthur Young in his in- 

 teresting Travels through France) between Pradelles and 

 Thuytz, mulberries and flies at the same time; by the 

 term Jlies I mean those myriads of them which form the 

 most disagreeable circumstance of the southern climates. 

 They are the first torments in Spain, Italy, and the Olive 

 district of France : it is not that they bite, sting, or hurt, 

 but they buzz, tease, and worry : your mouth, eyes, ears, 

 and nose, are full of them : they swarm on every eatable, 

 fruit, sugar, milk, every thing is attacked by them in such 

 myriads, that if they are not incessantly driven away by 

 a person who has nothing else to do, to eat a meal is im- 

 possible. They are however caught on prepared paper 

 and other contrivances with so much ease and in such 

 quantities, that were it not from negligence, they could 

 not abound in such incredible quantities. If I farmed 

 in these countries, I think I should manure four or five 

 acres every year with dead flies. — I have been much sur- 

 prised that the late learned Mr. Harmer should think it 

 odd to find, by writers who treated of southern climates, 

 that driving away flies was an object of importance. 

 Had he been with me in Spain and in Languedoc in 

 July and August, he would have been very far from 

 thinking there was any thing odd in it a ." 



a Young's Travels in France, i. 298. These flies are equally trou- 

 blesonie and tormenting in Sweden. See Amcen . Acad, iii. 343. 

 vol., I. K. 



