312 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



cribe too little. Many insects emit very powerful odours, 

 and some produce extraordinary effects upon the human 

 frame ; and it is an idea not altogether to be rejected, 

 that they may concentrate into a smaller compass the 

 properties and virtues of the plants upon which they 

 feed, and thus afford medicines more powerful in opera- 

 tion than the plants themselves. It is at least worth 

 while to institute a set of experiments with this view. 



Medicine at the present day is indebted to an ant 

 (Formica bispinosa, Oliv. Jungosa, F. ) for a kind of lint 

 collected by that insect from the Bombax and silk cot- 

 ton-tree, which as a styptic is preferable to the puff-ball, 

 and at Cayenne is successfully used to stop the blood in 

 the most violent haemorrhages a ; and gum ammoniac, 

 according to Mr. Jackson b , oozes out of a plant like fen- 

 nel, from incisions made in the bark by a beetle with a 

 large horn. But with these exceptions, (in which the 

 remedy is rather collected than produced by insects, ) and 

 that of spiders' webs, which are said to have been re- 

 cently administered with success in ague, the only insects 

 which directly supply us with medicine are some species 

 of Lytta and Mylabris. These beetles however amply 

 make up in efficacy for their numerical insignificance ; 

 and almost any article could be better spared from the 

 Materia Medica than one of the former usually known 

 under the name of Cantharides, which is not only of in- 



a Latr. Hist. Nat. des Fourmis, 48. 134. 



b Jackson's Marocco, 83. Some doubt however attaches to this 

 statement, from the circumstance of the figure which Mr. Jackson 

 gives of his beetle (Dibben Faskook) being clearly a mere copy of that 

 of Mr, Bruce' s Zimb! 



