INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



199 



comes ofF?^ To use the language of a poet of tlie Indies 

 from whom some of the above facts are selected^ — 



On every dish the booming beetle falls, 



The cockroach plays, or caterpillar crawls : 



A thousand shapes of variegated hues 



Parade the table or inspect the stews. 



To living walls the swarming hundreds stick, 



Or court, a dainty meal, the oily wick ; 



Heaps over heaps their slimy bodies drench, 



Out go the lamps with suffocating stench. 



When hideous insects evei-y plate defile, 



The laugh how empty, and how forced the smile !"2 



Drugs and medicines also, though often so nauseous to us, 

 form occasionally part of the food of insects. A small beetle 

 ( Sinodendnim pusillum ^ ) eats the roots of rhubarb, in which 

 I detected it in the East India Company's warehouses. Opium 

 is a dainty morceau to the white ants^ ; — and, what is more 

 extraordinary, Anohium paniceum ^ has been known to devour 

 the blister-beetle ( Cantharis vesicatoria), and even, as has been 

 already observed, Cayenne pepper. Swammerdam amongst 

 his treasures mentions " a detestable beetle," produced from a 

 worm that eats the roots of ginseng ; and he likewise notices 

 another, the larva of which devours the bag of the musk.^ 

 The cochineal, at Rio de Janeiro, is the prey of an insect re- 

 sembling an Ichneumon, but furnished with only two wings ; 

 its station is in the cotton that envelops the Coccus. Pre- 

 vious to its assumption of the pupa, it ejects a large globule 

 of pure red colouring matter.'' And lastly, the Coccus that pro- 

 duces the lac ( C, lacca) is, we are told, devoured by various 

 insects.^ 



Perhaps you imagine that these universal destroyers spare 

 at least our garments, in which you may at first conceive 

 there can be nothing very tempting to excite even the ap- 

 petite of an insect. Your housekeeper, however, would 



1 Williamson's East India Fade Mecum. 2 Calcutta, a Poem, 85. 



3 Ptinus piceus, Marsh. 



4 On examining ninety-two chests of opium, part of the cargo saved from the 

 Charlton, previously to reshipping them from Chittagong for China, thirteen 

 were found to be full of white ants, which had almost wholly devoured the 

 opium. {Article from Chittagong, Nov. 1812, in one of the Newspapers, July 31. 

 1813.) 



5 Ptinus ruhellus, Marsh, 6 Bibl Nat. i. 125. b. 126. a. 



7 Sir Geo. Staunton's Voy. 8vo. 189. 



8 Kerr in Philos. Trans. 1781. 



o 4 



