FOOD OF INSECTS. 385 



the hands of the butcher, select it from living victims, 

 and may with justice pride themselves upon the peculiar 

 freshness of their diet. Of these last, different tribes 

 follow different procedures. The Ichneumons devour 

 the flesh of the insects into which they have insinuated 

 themselves. Some of the CEstri, fixed in a spacious 

 apartment beneath the skin of an ox or deer, regale 

 themselves on a purulent secretion with which they are 

 surrounded. Others of the same tribe, partial to a higher 

 temperature, attach themselves to the interior of the sto- 

 mach of a horse, and in a bath of chyme of 1 02 degrees 

 of Fahrenheit revel on its juices. The various species 

 of horse-flies ( Tabatms and Stomoxys, F.) dart their sharp 

 lancets into the veins of quadrupeds, and satiate them- 

 selves in living streams ; while the gnat, the flea, the bug, 

 and the louse, plunge their proboscis even into those of 

 us lords of the creation, and banquet on " the ruddy 

 drops which warm our hearts." Some make their re- 

 past upon birds only, as the fly of the swallow, and other 

 OrnithomyicE) Latr., and the bird-louse (Nirmus, Herm.); 

 insects nearly allied, though one is dipterous and the 

 other apterous. And a most singular animal belonging 

 to the latter tribe (Nycteribia Vespertilionis, Latr.) re- 

 venges upon the bat its ravages of the insect world 3 . 

 Another numerous class kill their prey outright, either 

 devouring its solid parts, as the Carabidce, Staphyli- 

 nicUe, &c, or imbibing its juices only, as the infinite 

 hordes of the field-bug tribe. And the larvae of the gnat, 

 Stratyomys, and other flies aquatic in that state, the le- 

 viathans of the world of animalcules, swallow whole hosts 

 a Linn. Trans, xi. 11. t. 3./. 5—7. 

 VOL. I. 2 C 



