98 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



of all their serpents. Whence, unless perhaps from their 

 noxious qualities, could this idea of a connection between 

 insects and these reptiles be derived ? But to return from 

 this digression — Madame Merian's Ant of Visitation (Atta 

 cephalotes) will be considered in a subsequent letter : but I 

 cannot here omit a circumstance mentioned by Don Felix de 

 Azara, a Spanish traveller, who confirms her account, — that 

 these animals are so alarming and tremendous in their attacks, 

 that if they enter a house in the night, the inhabitants are 

 obliged to rise with all speed and run off in their shirts. 



I must next direct your attention to an insect, which per- 

 haps more than any other has been in every age an object of 

 terror and abhorrence — I mean the redoubted scorpion. And 

 though I shall not, with Aristotle, tell you of Persian kings 

 employing armies for several days in destroying them ; or, 

 with Pliny, of countries that they have depopulated ; yet my 

 account will not be devoid of that species of interest which the 

 dread of its power to do us injury imparts to any object. 

 Could you see one of these ferocious animals, perhaps a foot 

 in length, a size to which they sometimes attain, advancing 

 towards you in their usual menacing attitude, with its claws 

 expanded, and its many -jointed tail turned over its head; 

 were your heart ever so stout, I think you would start back 

 and feel a horror come across you; and though you knew not 

 the animal, you would conclude that such an aspect of malig- 

 nity must be the precursor of malignant effects. Nor would 

 you be mistaken, as you will presently see. This alarming 

 animal, though, like hymenopterous insects, it is armed with 

 a sting, is in no respect related to that order, and forms the 

 only genus, at present known, of the others that is so armed. 

 Even its sting is totally different from that of bees, wasps, 

 and other Hymenoptera, being more analogous to the venomous 

 tooth of serpents ; it wounds us with no barbed darts con- 

 cealed in a sheath, but only with a simple incurved mucro 

 terminating an ampullaceous joint. Two orifices, or, according 

 to some, three, are said to instil the poison, which, we are 

 informed, is sometimes as white as milk. This venom in 

 our European species is seldom attended, except to minor 

 animals, by any very serious consequences ; yet when it is com- 



