INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 135 
Drugs and medicines also, though often so nauseous to us, form occa- 
sionally part of the food of insects. A small beetle (Sinodendrum pusillum*) 
eats the roots of rhubarb, in which I detected it in the East Indian Com- 
pany’s warehouses. Opium is a dainty morceau to the white ants*;—and, 
what is more extraordinary, Anobium paniceum® has been known to devour 
the blister-beetle (Cantharis vesicatoria), and even, as has been already 
observed, Cayenne pepper. Swammerdamamongst his treasures mentions 
“a detestable beetle,” produced from a worm that eats the roots of gin- 
seng; and he likewise notices another, the larva of which devours the bag 
of the musk.** The cochineal, at Rio de Janeiro, is the prey of an insect 
resembling an Ichneumon, but furnished with only two wings; its station 
is in the cotton that envelops the Coccus. Previous to its assumption of 
the pupa, it ejects a large globule of pure red colouring matter.° And 
lastly, the Coccus that produces the lac (C. acca) is, we are told, devoured 
by various insects.® 
Perhaps you imagine that these universal destroyers spare at least our 
garments, in which you may at first conceive there can be nothing very 
tempting to excite even the appetite of an insect. Your housekeeper, 
however, would probably tell you a different story, and enlarge upon the 
trouble and pains it costs her to guard those under her care against the 
ravages of the moths. Upon further inquiry you would find that nothing 
made of wool, whether cloth or stuff, comes amiss to them. There are 
five species described by Linné, which are more or less engaged in this 
work : — Linea vestianella, tapetzella, pellionella, Laverna sarcitella, and 
Galleria mellonella. Of the first we have no particular history, except that 
it destroys garments in the summer; but of the others Reaumur has 
given a complete one. 7’. éapetzella, or the tapestry moth, not uncommon 
in our houses, is most injurious to the lining of carriages, which are more 
exposed to the air than the furniture of our apartments. These do not 
construct a moveable habitation like the common species, but, eating their 
way in the thickness of the cloth, weave themselves silken galleries in 
which they reside, and which they render close and warm by covering them 
with some of the eroded wool.’ J". pellionella is a most destructive insect; 
and ladies have often to deplore the ravages which it commits in their 
valuable furs, whether made up into muffs or tippets. It pays no more 
respect to the regal ermine than to the woollen habiliments of the poor; 
its proper food, indeed, being hair, though it devours both wool and fur. 
This species, if hard pressed by hunger, will even eat horse-hair, and make 
its habitation, a moveable house or case in which it travels from place to 
place, of this untractable material. These little creatures will shave the 
hair from a skin as neatly and closely as if a razor had been employed.* 
The most natural food of the next species, ZL. sarcitella, is wool ; but in 
1 Ptinus piceus Marsh. 
2 On examining ninety-two chests of opium, part of the cargo saved from the 
Charlton, previously to reshipping them from Chittagong for China, thirteen 
were found to be full of white ants, which had almost wholly devoured the 
1818.) (Article from Chittagong, Nov. 1812, in one of the Newspapers, July 31, 
> Ptinus rubellus Marsh. 4 Bibl. Nat. i. 125. b. 126. a. 
5 Sir Geo. Staunton’s Voy. 8vo. 189. 6 Kerr in Philos, Trans. 1781, 
7 Reaum. iii, 266. 8 Ibid. 59. 
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