DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 43 
conspicuous in the injuries which they occasion, for nothing in nature that 
possesses or has possessed animal or vegetable life is safe from their 
inroads. Neither the cunning of the fox, nor the swiftness of the horse or 
deer, nor the strength of the buffalo, nor the ferocity of the lion or tiger, 
nor the armour of the rhinoceros, nor the giant bulk or sagacity of the 
elephant, nor eyen the authority of imperial man, who boasts himself to be 
the lord of all, can secure them from becoming a prey to these despised 
beings. ‘The air affords no protection to the birds, nor the water to the 
fish; insects pursue them all to their most secret conclaves and strongest 
citadels, and compel them to submit to their sway. Flora’s empire is still 
more exposed to their cruel domination and ravages ; and there is scarcely 
one of her innumerable subjects, from the oak, the glory of the forest, to 
the most minute lichen that grows upon its trunk, that is not destined to 
be the food of these next to nonentities in our estimation. And when life 
departs from man, the inferior animals, or vegetables, they become univer 
sally, sooner or later, the inheritance of insects. 
I shall principally bespeak your attention to the injuries in question as 
they affect ourselves. ‘These may be divided into direct and indirect. By 
direct injuries I mean every species of attack upon our own persons ; and 
by indirect, such as are made upon our property. To the former of these 
I shall confine myself in the present letter. 
Insects, as to their direct attacks upon us, may be arranged in three \ 
principal classes. ‘Those, namely, which seek to make us their food; | 
those whose object is to prevent or revenge an injury which they either ¢ 
fear, or have received from us; and those which indeed offer us no 
violence, but yet incommode us extremely in other ways. 
I hope I shall not too much offend your delicacy if I begin the first class 
of our insect assailants with a very disgusting genus, which Providence 
seems to have created to punish inattention to personal cleanliness. But 
though this pest of man must not be wholly passed over, yet, since it is 
unfortunately too well known, it will not be at all necessary for me to 
enlarge upon its history. I shall only mention one fact which shows the 
astonishingly rapid increase of these animals, where they have once gotten 
——— 
possession, It is a vulgar notion, that a louse in twenty-four hours may =~ 
see two generations ; but this is rather overshooting the mark. Leeuwen- 
hoek, whose love for science overcame the nausea that such creatures are 
apt to excite, proves that their nits or eggs are not hatched till the eighth 
day after they are laid, and that they do not themselves commence laying 
before they are a month old. He ascertained, however, that a single 
female louse may, in eight weeks, witness the birth of five thousand 
descendants.! You remember how wolves were extirpated from this 
country, but perhaps never suspected any monarch of imposing a tribute 
of lice upon his subjects. Yet we ave gravely told that in Mexico and 
Peru such a polletax was exacted, and that bags full of these treasures 
were found in the palace of Montezuma!!!? Were our own taxes paid in 
such coin, what little grumbling would there be! 
Two other species of this genus, besides the common louse, are, in this 
1 Leeuw. Zpist. 98. 1696. 
2 Bingley, nim. Biogr. first edition, iii, 457. St. Pierre's Studies, &e,, i, 312. 
