DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



97 



is very painful, is speedily followed by swelling and inflam- 

 mation. ^ 



Ants are insects of this order, which, though our in- 

 digenous species may be regarded as harmless, in some 

 countries are gifted with double means of annoyance, both 

 from their sting and their bite. A green kind in New South 

 Wales was observed by Sir Joseph Banks to inflict a wound 

 scarcely less painful than the sting of a bee.^ Another, from 

 the intolerable anguish occasioned by its bite, which re- 

 sembles that produced by a spark of fire and seems at- 

 tended by venom, is called the fire-ant. Captain Stedman 

 relates that this caused a whole company of soldiers to 

 start and jump about as if scalded with boiling water ; and 

 its nests were so numerous that it was not easy to avoid 

 them.^ We are told of a third species, which emulates 

 the scorpion in the malignity of its sting or bite.* Knox, 

 in his account of Ceylon, mentions a black ant, called by the 

 natives Coddia, which he says " bites desperately, as bad as 

 if a man were burnt by a coal of fire ; but they are of a 

 noble nature, and will not begin unless you disturb them." 

 The reason the Cinghalese assign for the horrible pain 

 occasioned by their bite is curious, and will serve to amuse 

 you. " Formerly these ants went to ask a wife of the Noya^ 

 a venomous and noble kind of snake ; and because they had 

 such a high spirit to dare to offer to be related to such a 

 generous creature, they had this virtue bestowed upon 

 them, that they should sting after this manner. And if 

 they had obtained a wife of the Noya, they should have 

 had the privilege to sting full as bad as he."^ Sted- 

 man's story of a large ant that stripped the trees of their 

 leaves, to feed, as was supposed, a blind serpent under 

 ground ^, is somewhat akin to this : as is also another, related 

 to me by a friend of mine, of a species of Mantis, now in my 

 cabinet, taken in one of the Indian Islands, which, according 

 to the received opinion amongst the natives, was the parent 



1 Oken's Ms, 1831, p. 1917., from a letter received by Dr. Reich, from the 

 Cape of Good Hope, quoted in Burmeistev's Manual of Ent. p. 381. 



2 Hawkes worth's Cook, iii. 223. 



3 Stedman. ii. 94. 4 Bingley, iii. 385. first edit. 

 ^ Knox's Ceylon, 24. 6 Stedman, ii. 142. 



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