226 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS, 



them, you well know; — and assailants more violent, hor- 

 nets, wasps, and the great rove-beetle, {Staphylinus max- 

 illosus, L.) if butchers do not protect their shambles, will 

 carry off no inconsiderable portion of their meat. A 

 small cock-roach (Blatta lapponica, L.) which I have 

 taken upon our eastern coast, swarms in the huts of the 

 Laplanders, and will sometimes annihilate in a single day, 

 a work in which a carrion-beetle {Silpha lapponica, L.) 

 joins, their whole stock of dried fish a . The quantity of 

 sugar that flies and wasps will devour, if they can come 

 at it, especially the latter, the diminutive size of the crea- 

 tures considered, is astonishing : — in one year long ago, 

 when sugar w r as much cheaper than it is now, a trades- 

 man told me he calculated his loss, by the wasps alone, 

 at twenty pounds. A singular spectacle is exhibited in 

 India (so Captain Green relates) by a small red ant with 

 a black head. They march in long files, about three 

 abreast, to any place where sugar is kept ; and when they 

 are saturated, return in the same order, but by a diffe- 

 rent route. If the sugar, upon which they are busy, be 

 carried into the sun, they immediately desert it. What 

 is very extraordinary* these ants are also fond of oil. 

 Sweetmeats and preserves are very subject to be attacked 

 by a minute oblong transparent mite with very short legs 

 and without any hair upon its body. Our butter and 

 lard are stated to be eaten by the caterpillar of a moth 

 {Crambus pinguinalis, F.). Musca putris, L., the parent 

 fly of the jumping cheese-maggot, loses no opportunity, 

 we know, of laying its eggs in our fresh cheeses, and 

 when they get dry and old the mite {Acarus Siro, L.) 



a Amcen, Acad. iii. 345. 



