INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 89 
rabbit, do not escape their attack. The hare in Lapland is more tormented 
by the gnats than any other quadruped. To avoid this pest it is obliged 
to leave the cover of the woods in full day, and seek the plains: hence 
the hunters say, that of three litters which a hare produces in a year, the 
first dies by the cold, the second by gnats, and only the third escapes 
and comes to maturity.1— We learn from the ingenious Mr. Clark, that 
the American rabbit and hare are infested by the largest species of 
Qstrus? yet discovered; and our domestic rabbits sometimes swarm 
with the bed-bug. This was the case with some kept by two young 
gentlemen at my house Jast summer to such a degree, that I found it 
necessary to have them killed. 
Nor are the inhabitants of the waters sheltered by their peculiar element 
from these universal assailants. The larvae of Dytisci, fixing themselves 
by their suctorious mandibles to the body of fish, doubtless destroy an 
infinite number of the young fry of our ponds. Some species of salmon 
(Salmo fario L.) are the food of an animal which Linné has arranged 
under Pediculus ; and probably many others of the finny tribes may, like 
the birds, have their peculiar parasites. Even shell-fish do not escape, for 
the Nymphon grossipes enters the shell of the muscle and devours its 
inhabitant. Lam, &c. 
1 De Geer, ii. 83. 
2 Considered by Mr. Clark as a new genus, which he has named Cuterebra, and 
Coe a has described three species, — Hsscy on the Bots of Horses, &c. p. 68. 
£2, f, 24—29, 
