116 



LETTER V. 

 INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 

 INDIRECT INJURIES. 



Having detailed to you the direct injuries which we suffer 

 from insects, I am now to call your attention to their indirect 

 attacks upon us, or the injury which they do our property ; 

 and under this view also you will own, with the fullest con- 

 viction, that they are not beings that can with prudence or 

 safety be disregarded or despised. Our property, at least 

 that part exposed to the annoyance of these creatures, may 

 be regarded as consisting of animal and vegetable productions, 

 and that in two states ; when they are living, namely, and 

 after they are dead. I shall therefore endeavour to give you 

 a sketch of the mischief which they occasion, first to our 

 living animal property, then to our living vegetable property ; 

 and, lastly, to our dead stock, whether animal or vegetable. 



Next to our own persons, the animals which we employ in 

 our business or pleasures, or fatten for food, individually con- 

 sidered, are the most valuable part of our possessions — and at 

 certain seasons, hosts of insects of various kinds are incessant 

 in their assaults upon most of them. — To begin with that 

 noble animal the horse. See him, when turned out to his 

 pasture, unable to touch a morsel of the food he has earned 

 by his labours. He flies to the shade, evidently in great 

 uneasiness, where he stands continually stamping from the 

 pain produced by the insertion of the weapons sheathed in 

 the proboscis of a little fly (^Stomoxys calcitrans) before 

 noticed as attacking ourselves.^ This alights upon him 

 sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, and never 

 lets him rest while the day lasts. See him again when in har- 

 ness and travelling. He is bathed in blood flowing from innu- 



1 See above, p. 87. 



