M ULTITUDE OF PESTS. 



209 



currency has caused the cowrie trade to fall off, 

 and the steady rate of decrease shows that shell 

 money is doomed. 



Here, as in "Western India, the rains bring 

 forth a multitude of pests. The rooms when 

 lighted at night are visited by cockroaches and 

 flying ants ; scarabsei and various mantidaB ; 

 moths and 'death's heads' of marvellous hideous- 

 ness. Giant snails (achatinae), millepedes, and 

 beetles crawl over the country, and the firefly 

 glances through the shade. Mosquitos are said 

 not to be troublesome, but in an inner room I 

 found curtains necessary ; the house-fly is a tor- 

 ment to irritable skins. Pleas, and the rest of 

 the 'piquante population,' are most numerous 

 during the north-east monsoon. The bug, which 

 was held to be an importation, is now thoroughly 

 naturalized upon the Island ; in the interior it is 

 as common as in the cities of Egypt and of Syria, 

 where a broken rafter will discharge a living 

 shower. I could not, however, hear anything of 

 the ' Pasi bug,' which, according to Dr Krapf, 

 causes burnings, chills, and fever. He made it 

 to rival the celebrated Meeanee (Muganaj) bug, 

 the Acarus Persicus, whose exceedingly poisonous 

 bite was supposed to be fatal. In the Lake 

 Regions of Central Africa (1.371) I have con- 



VOL. I. 14 



