132 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



depredations unmolested, sheltering themselves in tubes made 

 of grains of wax, and lined with silken tapestry, spun and 

 wove by themselves, which the bees (however disposed they 

 may be to revenge the mischief which they do them by de- 

 vouring what to all other animals would be indigestible, their 

 wax) are unable to penetrate. These larvae are sometimes so 

 numerous in a hive, and commit such extensive ravages, as 

 to force the poor bees to desert it and seek another habitation. 



I shall not delay you longer upon this subject by detailing 

 what wild animals sulfer from insects, further than by ob- 

 serving that the two creatures of this description in which 

 we are rather interested, the hare and the rabbit, do not 

 escape their attack. The hare in Lapland is more tormented 

 by the gnats than any other quadruped. To avoid this pest 

 it is obliged to leave the cover of the woods in full day, and 

 seek the plains : hence the hunters say, that of three litters 

 which a hare produces in a year, the first dies by the cold, the 

 second by gnats, and only the third escapes and comes to 

 maturity.^ — We learn from the ingenious Mr. Clark, that 

 the American rabbit and hare are infested by the largest 

 species of QEstrus^ yet discovered ; and our domestic rabbits 

 sometimes swarm with the bed-bug. This was the case with 

 some kept by two young gentlemen at my house last summer 

 to such a degree, that I found it necessary to have them 

 killed. 



Nor are the inhabitants of the waters sheltered by their 

 peculiar element from these universal assailants. The larv96 

 of Dytisci, fixing themselves by their suctorious mandibles to 

 the body of Jish, doubtless destroy an infinite number of the 

 young fry of our ponds. Some species of salmon (^Salmo 

 fario L.) are the food of an animal which Linne has 

 arranged under Pediculus; and probably many others of 

 the finny tribes may, like the birds, have their peculiar 

 parasites. Even shell-fish do not escape, for the Nymphon 

 grossipes enters the shell of the muscle and devours its inha- 

 bitant. I am, &c. 



1 De Geer, ii. 83. 



2 Considered by Mr. Clark as a new genus, which he has named Ctiterehra, 

 and of which he has described three species. — Essay on the Bots of HorseSy &c. 

 p. 63. t. 2. f. 24—29. 



