108 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



No one would suppose that caterpillars, which feed upon 

 vegetable substances, could be met with alive in the stomach ; 

 yet Dr. Lister gives an account of a boy who vomited up 

 several, which, he observes, had sixteen legs. ^ The eggs 

 perhaps might have been swallowed in salad; and, as vege- 

 tables make a part of most people's daily diet, enough might 

 have passed into the stomach to support them when hatched. 

 — Linne tells us that the caterpillar of a moth (^Aglossa pin- 

 guinalis), common in houses, has also been found in a similar 

 situation, and is one of the worst of our insect infesters. — In 

 a very old tract, which gives a figure of the insect, a cater- 

 pillar of the almost incredible length of the middle finger is 

 said to have been voided from the nostrils of a young man 

 long afflicted with dreadful pains in his head.^ — But the 

 most extraordinary account with respect to lepidopterous 

 larvae (imless he has mistaken his insects) is given by Azara, 

 the Spanish traveller before quoted ; who says that in South 

 America there is a large brown moth, which deposits its 

 young in a kind of saliva upon the flesh of persons who sleep 

 naked; these introduce themselves under the skin without 

 being perceived, where they occasion swelling attended by 

 inflammation and violent pain. When the natives discover 

 it, they squeeze out the larvae, which usually amount to five 

 or six.^ 



But amongst all the orders, none is more fruitful in de- 

 vourers of man than the Diptera, The Bot-flies (^CEstrus 

 L.) you have, doubtless, often heard of, and how sorely it 

 annoys our cattle and other quadrupeds ; but I suspect have 

 no notion that there is a species appropriated to man. The 

 existence, indeed, of this species seems to have been over- 

 looked by entomologists (though it stands in Gmelin's edition 

 of the Sy sterna Naturce"^, upon the authority of the younger 

 Linne), till Humboldt and Bonpland mentioned it again. 

 Speaking of the low regions of the torrid zone, where the 



1 Philos. Trans, ubi supra. 



2 Fulvius Angel inus et Vincentlus Alsarius, De verme admirando per narcs 

 egresso. Ravenna?, 1610. 



3 Azara, 217. I cannot help suspecting this to be synonymous with the 

 (Estrus Hominis next mentioned. 



■1 From Pallas, N. Nord. Beytr. i. 157. 



