INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 235 



Linne has observed this with respect to S. Spectrum and 

 Camelus ; and Mr. Marsham, on the authority of Sir 

 Joseph Banks, relates that several specimens of S. Gigas 

 were seen to come out of the floor of a nursery in a gen- 

 tleman's house, to the no small alarm and discomfiture 

 of both nurse and children a . — The genus Trypoxylon, 

 F., many species of Crabro, F., Vespa Parietum, L., La- 

 treille's genera Xylocopa, Chelostoma, Ueriades, Mega- 

 chile and Anthophora, (all separated from Apis, L., ) per- 

 forate posts and rails and other timber, to form cells for 

 their young b . 



The Linnean order Aptera furnishes another timber- 

 eating insect, a kind of wood-louse, though scarcely an 

 eighth of the size of the common one, (Limnoria tere- 

 brans of Dr. Leach,) which in point of rapidity of exe- 

 cution seems to surpass all its European brethren, and 

 in many cases may be productive of more serious injury 

 than any of them, since it attacks the wood- work of piers 

 and jetties constructed in salt-water, and so effectually, 

 as to threaten the rapid destruction of those in which it 

 has established itself. In December 1815 I was fa- 

 voured by Charles Lutwidge, esq. of Hull, with speci- 

 mens of wood from the piers at Bridlington Quay which 

 wofully confirm the fears entertained of their total ruin 

 by the hosts of these pygmy assailants that have made 

 good a lodgement in them, and which, though not so 

 big as a grain of rice, ply their masticatory organs with 

 such assiduity as to have reduced great part of the wood- 

 work into a state resembling honey-comb. One speci- 

 men was a portion of a three-inch fir plank nailed to 



a Linn. Trans, x. 403. 



b Kirby, Mon. Ap. Ang. i. 152-194. Latreille, Gen. iv. 161—. 



