136 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS, 
case of necessity it will eat fur and hair. To woollen cloths or stuffs it 
often does incredible injury, especially if they are not kept dry and well 
aired. Of the devastation committed by Galleria mellonella in our bee- 
hives I have before given you an account : to this I must here add, that if 
it cannot come at wax, it will content itself with woollen cloth, leather, or 
even paper.” Mr. Curtis found the grub of a beetle (Ptinus fur) in an 
old coat, which it devoured, making holes and channels in it ; and another 
sect of the same order (Affagenus pellio), Linné tells us, will sometimes 
entirely strip a fur garment of its hair. A small beetle of the Capricorn 
tribe (Callidium pygmaum Fabr.) I haye good reason to believe devours 
leather, since I have found it abundant in old shoes.‘ 
Next to our garments, our houses and buildings, which shelter us avd 
our property from the inclemency and injuries of the atmosphere, are of 
consequence to us; yet these, solid and substantial as they appear, are 
not secure from the attack of insects; and even our furniture often suffers 
from them. A great part of our comfort within doors depends upon our 
apartments being kept clean and neat. Spiders by their webs, which they 
suspend in every angle, and flies by their excrements, which they scatter 
indiscriminately upon every thing, interfere with this comfort, and add 
much to the business of our servants. Even ants will sometimes plant 
their colonies in our kitchens (I have known the horse-ant, Formica rufa, 
do this), and are not easily expelled.® Those of Sicrra Leone, as I was 
once informed by the learned Professor Afzelius, make their way by millions 
through the houses. They resolutely pursuea straight course ; and neither 
buildings nor rivers, even though myriads perish in the attempt, can divert 
them from it. Several tribes of insects seek their food in the timber em- 
ployed in our houses, buildings, gates or fences, or made up into furniture. 
The large caken beams, which, according to the old mode of building, 
support the joists of the upper floors in the houses at Brussels, as I had 
an opportunity of observing when there in 1836, have often their extre- 
mities so eaten away like a honeycomb by the larva of a bectle (Anobium 
tessellatum, some of the dead perfect insects of which I found in their 
holes), that it is necessary to replace them at great expense to prevent the 
floors coming down; and I subsequently saw beams similarly attacked 
which had been removed from houses at Antwerp. M, Audouin has laid 
before the French Academy an account of the injury done by Termes luci- 
fugus to the wood-work of buildinzs at Rochefort and La Rochelle; and 
of that of the new galleries of the Museum of Natural History at Paris by 
the larva of a small beetle (Lyctus canaliculatus Fab.), which feeds on the 
1 Reaum. iii. 42. 2 Thid. 257. 5 Amen. Acad. 346. 
4 Hides and skins are attacked by several species of Dermestes, which are 
sometimes so injurious in the large skin warehouses of London, that the mer- 
chants offered 20,000/. as a reward for an available remedy, (Westwood, od. 
Class. Ins, i. p. 158.) “ 
5 Within the last few years, a very minute yellow ant (Myrmica domestica 
Shuckard) has become a great pest in many houses in Brighton, London, and 
Liverpool; in some cases to so great an extent as to cause the occupants to leave 
them. Dr, Bostock was obliged to replace the floor of his kitchen, under which 
they swarmed in incredible numbers, by a new one resting on tiles imbedded in 
cement. (Trans. Ent. Soc, Lond. ii. 66. proc, li. lii.; Shuckard in Mag. Nat, Hist 
MS. ii. 626.) 
® Spence in Trans, Ent, Soc. Lond. ii, proc, x, 
