FLORIDA INSECT PESTS. 
229 
had been engulfed all night in trains passing in and out of 
Oxford, he had to walk at night four miles due westward, from 
office to home, along the great western highway (a walk more 
trying than he had found an alpine pass). Even then, when 
floundering from snow-drifts in road, where vehicles abandoned 
were nearly buried, to the footpaths inside Hyde Park, in hopes 
of finding there drifts of less depth and difficulty, he could recall, 
as in the dim light he struggled on, the brighter times when he 
had heard such and such a songster, or caught sight of such 
and such a nest, and he was cheered and rendered hopeful by 
the remembrance. And when, at last, on reaching home, he 
had to shovel a path to the door, and have his boots almost 
cut from his feet, it was pleasant to be able to forget the diffi- 
culties of the walk in recollections such as had cheered and 
encouraged him in its course. 
The man that has the tastes whereof I write, may abundantly 
gratify them wherever he may be placed, even in London ; but 
he can especially cultivate such pursuits, and find in them never- 
ending delights, if he but set out in the right wa}’, in a district so 
rich in everything that pertains to the sights and sounds of rural 
life, especially of bird-life, as the one that lies around Richmond. 
Richmond-on-Thames. W. J. C. Miller. 
FLORIDA INSECT PESTS. 
ROM the few notes that have already been published in 
this magazine, the reader might conclude that Florida, 
the land of flowers, with its gaudy butterflies, bright 
coloured songsters, and luxuriant hammock-land, was 
a perfect heaven upon earth. Such, however, is not by any 
means the case. The sub-tropical beauty of birds and vegetation 
is indeed unbounded, but there are serious drawbacks in the 
shape of most noxious tropical insects. The wooden houses are 
built on piles, and under them the sand is infested with “jigger- 
fleas.” All dogs are attacked by them, and fowls and puppies 
frequently killed ; in fact, sitting hens must regularly have their 
combs covered with a mixture of lard and brimstone, and insect 
powder dusted under their wings, to keep them alive. These 
jiggers are very tiny and black ; they do not hop like old world 
fleas, but, fixing themselves into the flesh, stick there and are 
most difficult to remove. An English visitor who has once 
collected eggs in a Florida hen-house, on a hot June day, will 
for ever remember the result. Worse than these are the “ red 
bugs ” (everything in America is a bug or a worm). They 
swarm in the wet sand on lake shores or in hammocks, and 
burrowing under the skin, after the habit of our harvest bugs. 
