130 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



Our friend Captain Green, of the sixth regiment of 

 the East India Company's native troops, relates to me, 

 that in India, when the mangoes are ripe, which is the 

 hottest part of the summer, a very minute black fly 

 makes its appearance, which, because it flies in swarms 

 into the eyes, is very troublesome, and causes much 

 pain, is called there the eye-jly. At this season the eyes 

 are attacked by a disease, supposed to be occasioned by 

 eating the mangoes, but more probably the result of the 

 irritation produced by the fly in question, which, how- 

 ever they admit, carries the infection from one person 

 to another. 



You know that the hairs taken from the pods of JDoli- 

 chos pruriens and urens, L., commonly called Cowhage 

 and Cow-itch a , occasion a most violent itching, but per- 

 haps are not aware that those of the caterpillars of seve- 

 ral Bombyces, a family of Moths, will produce the same 

 disagreeable effect. One of these is the procession moth, 

 [B. processionea, L.) of which Reaumur has given so 

 interesting an account. In consequence of their short 

 stiff" hairs sticking in his skin, after handling them, he 

 suffered extremely for several days ; and being ignorant 

 at first of the cause of the itching, and rubbing his eyes 

 with his hands, he brought on a swelling of the eye-lids, 

 so that he could scarcely open them. Ladies were af- 

 fected even by going too near the nest of the animal, and 

 found their necks full of troublesome tumours, occasion- 

 ed by short hairs, or fragments of hair, brought by the 



1 Cowhage has been administered with success as an anthelminthic, 

 as has likewise spun-glass pounded ; the spicula of these substances 

 destroying the worms. The hair of the caterpillars here alluded to, 

 and perhaps also of the larva of Bombyx Caja, (the Tiger-Moth,) might 

 probably be equally efficacious, 



