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. circumvolens, &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 

 flies " 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 G-oshen 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, puia, "musca" (Eccles. 

 x. 1, Isaiah vii. 10) ; but in every 



