434 
INSECTS. 
[Chap. XII. 
their stomachs close to the earth, and their hind legs 
extended "behind, they repose in comparative coolness, 
and bid defiance to their persecutors. 
Dipteka. Mosquitoes. — But of all the insect pests 
that beset an unseasoned European the most provoking 
by far is the truculent mosquito. 1 Next to the torture 
which it inflicts, its most annoying peculiarities are the 
booming hum of its approach, its cunning, its audacity, 
and the perseverance with which it renews its attacks 
however frequently repulsed. These characteristics are 
so remarkable as fully to justify the conjecture that 
the mosquito, and not the ordinary fly, constituted the 
plague inflicted upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians. 2 
1 Culex laniger? Wied. InKandy 
Mr. Thwaites finds C. fuscanus, 
C. ciratmvolens, &c, and one with 
a most formidable hooked proboscis, 
to which he has assigned the ap- 
propriate name C. Begins. 
2 The precise species of insect 
by means of which the Almighty 
signalised the plague of flies, re- 
mains uncertain, as the Hebrew 
term arob or orov, which has been 
rendered in one place, " Divers 
sorts of flies," Ps. cv. 31 ; and in 
another, "swarms of flies," Exod. 
viii. 21, &c, means merely "an 
assemblage," a " mixture," or a 
" swarm," and the expletive " of 
Jlies " is an interpolation of the 
translators. This, however, serves 
to show that the fly implied was 
one easily recognisable by its habit 
of swarming ; and the further fact 
that it bites, or rather stings, is 
elicited from the expression of the 
Psalmist, Ps. lxxviii. 45, that the 
insects by which the Egyptians 
were tormented " devoured them," 
so that here are two peculiarities 
inapplicable to the domestic fly, 
but strongly characteristic of gnats 
and mosquitoes. 
Bruce thought that the fly of 
the fourth plague was the " zimb" 
of Abyssinia which he so graphi- 
cally describes ; and "Westwood, in 
an ingenious passage in his Ento- 
mologist's Text-book, p. 17, combats, 
the strange idea of one of the 
bishops, that it was a cockroach! 
and argues in favour of the mos- 
quito. This view he sustains by a 
reference to the habits of the crea- 
ture, the swarms in which it invades 
a locality, and the audacity with 
which it enters the houses ; and he 
accounts for the exemption of " the 
land of Groshen in which the Israe- 
lites dwelt," by the fact of its being 
sandy pasture above the level of the 
river ; whilst the mosquitoes were 
produced freely in the rest of Egypt, 
the soil of which was submerged by 
the rising of the Nile. 
In all the passages in the Old 
Testament in which flies are alluded 
to, otherwise than in connection 
with the Egyptian infliction, the 
word used in the Hebrew is zevov, 
which the Septuagint renders by 
the ordinary generic term for flies 
in general, jxvla, "musca" (Eccles. 
x. 1, Isaiah vii. 10) ; but in every 
