DIKECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 265 



same time I cannot help observing that their proscription of 

 the remainder may have been too indiscriminate. Mankind 

 are apt to run from one extreme to the other. From having 

 ascribed too much efficacy to insect -remedies, we may now 

 ascribe too little. Many insects emit very powerful odours, 

 and some produce extraordinary effects upon the human 

 frame ; and it is an idea not altogether to be rejected, that 

 they may concentrate into a smaller compass the properties 

 and virtues of the plants upon which they feed, and thus 

 afford medicines more powerful in operation than the plants 

 themselves. It is at least worth while to institute a set of 

 experiments with this view. 



Medicine at the present day is indebted to an ant (^Formica 

 bispinosa Oliv., fungosa F.) for a kind of lint collected by 

 that insect from the Bombax or silk cotton-tree, which as a 

 styptic is preferable to the puff-ball, and at Cayenne is suc- 

 cessfully used to stop the blood in the most violent haemor- 

 rhages ^ ; and gum ammoniac, according to Mr. Jackson ^, 

 oozes out of a plant like fennel, from incisions made in the 

 bark by a beetle with a large horn. But, with these excep- 

 tions (in which the remedy is rather collected than produced 

 by insects), and that of spiders' webs, which are said to have 

 been recently administered with success in ague, the only 

 insects which directly supply us with medicine are some 

 species of Cantharis and Mylahris. These beetles however 

 amply make up in efficacy for their numerical insignificance ; 

 and almost any article could be better spared from the Ma- 

 teria Medica than one of the former usually known under the 

 name of Cantharides, which is not only of incalculable im- 

 portance as a vesicatory, but is now administered internally 

 in many cases with very good effect. In Europe, the insect 

 chiefly used with this view is the Cantharis vesicatoria ^ ; 

 but in America the C. cinerea and vittata (which are ex- 



1 Latr. Hist. Nat. des Fourmis, 48. 134. 



2 Jackson's Marocco, 83. Some doubt however attaches to this statement, 

 from the circumstance of the figure which Mr. Jackson gives of his beetle 

 (^Dibhen Fashook), being clearly a mere copy of that of Mr. Bruce's Zimh. 



3 This insect, generally so rare in England, appeared in the summer of 1837 

 in great numbers in Essex, Suffolk, and the Isle of Wight. {Ent. Mag. v. 208. 

 516.) 



