140 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
indigenous here, and perhaps nowhere in Europe, but are one of the evils 
which commerce has imported; and we may think ourselves well off that 
others of the larger species of the genus have not been introduced in the 
same way — as, for instance, Blatta gigantea, a native of Asia, Africa, and 
America, many times the size of the common one, which, not content with 
devouring meat, clothes, and books, even attacks persons in their sleep, 
and the extremities of the dead and dying.* 
— The house-cricket may perhaps be deemed a still more annoying insect 
than the common cock-roach, adding an incessant noise to its ravages ; 
since, although for a short time, it may not be unpleasant to hear 
“the cricket chirrup in the hearth,” 
so constant a din every evening must very much interrupt comfort and 
conversation. These garrulous animals, which live in a kind of artificial 
torrid zone, are very thirsty souls, and are frequently found drowned in 
pans of water, milk, broth, and the like. Whatever is moist, even stock- 
ings or linen hung out to dry, is to them a bonne bouche ; they will eat the 
scummings of pots, yeast, crumbs of bread, and even salt, or any thing 
within their reach. Sometimes they are so abundant in houses as to 
become absolute pests, flying into the candles and into people’s faces. 
At Cuddapa, in the ceded districts to the northward of Mysore, Captain 
Green was much annoyed by a jumping insect, which, from his description, 
I should take for the larva of a species of cricket. They were of a dun 
colour, and from half to three-fourths of an inch in length. They abounded 
at night, and were very injurious to papers and books, which they both dis- 
coloured and devoured; leather also was eaten by them. Such was their 
boldness and avidity, that they attacked the exposed parts of the body when 
you were asleep, nibbling the ends of the fingers, particularly the skin under 
the nails, which was only discoverable by a slight soreness that succeeded. 
So great was their agility that they could seldom be caught or crushed. They 
were a mute insect, but probably the imago would make noise enough. 
But the white ants, wherever they prevail, are a still worse plague than 
either of these insects — they are the great calamity, as Linné terms them, 
of both the Indies. When they find their way into houses or warehouses, 
nothing less hard than metal or glass escapes their ravages. Their favourite 
food, however, is wood of all kinds, except the teak (Z'ectona grandis) and 
iron-wood (Sideroaylon), which are the only sorts known that they will 
not touch*®; and so infinite are the multitudes of the assailants, and such 
is the excellence of their tools, that all the timber-work of a spacious 
apartment is often destroyed by them in a few nights. Exteriorly, how- 
ever, every thing appears as if untouched; for these wary depredators, and 
this is what constitutes the greatest singularity of their history, carry on 
all their operations by sap and mine, destroying first the inside of solid 
1 Drury’s Insects, iii. Preface. 
2 It is not its hardness that protects the teak, as the Asiatic Termites attack Lig- 
num Vit#, but probably some essential oil disagreeable to them with which it is 
impregnated. ‘This is the more likely, since they will eat it when it is old and has 
been long exposed tothe air. Tannin has been conjectured to be the protecting 
substance, but erroneously, as leather of every kind is devoured by them. (Wil- 
liamson’s Last India Vade Mecum, ii, 56.) It is its hardness probably that protects 
ue Tags from the African Zermites. (Smeathman in Philos, Trans. 1781, 
