516 
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS-MITE. 
less than twenty-eight teeth. The Rock-scorpion is a large creature, measuring about six 
inches in length when fully grown. 
Like the other Arachnida, the Scorpion is carnivorous, and feeds upon various living- 
creatures, such as insects and the smaller Crustacea. They mostly seize their prey in their 
claws, and then wound it with the sting, before attempting to eat it. Even the hard-mailed 
coleoptera, such as the ground beetles, the weevils, etc., fall victims to this dread weapon, 
while the grasshoppers and locusts fall an easy prey before so terrible a foe. 
MITES; ACARINA. 
We will now turn our attention to the little, but annoying, creatures called Mites. 
None of the Mites attain large dimensions, and the greater number of them are almost 
microscopic in their minuteness. Everywhere the Mites are found, in the earth, in trees, in 
houses, beneath the water, and parasitic upon animals. They haunt our cellars and swarm 
upon our provisions— cheese, ham, bacon, and biscuits are equally covered with these minute 
but potent destroyers ; and even our flour stores are ravaged by the countless millions of Mites 
that assail the white treasures. Whether the cause or the effect of the malady. Mites are 
found in many forms of disease, both in man and beast, and will certainly propagate the 
infection if they are removed from the patient and transferred to a healthy person. They are 
even found deep within the structures of the vital organs, and Mites have been discovered in 
the very brain and eye of man. 
A very common and most annoying species is the well-known Hakvest-bug. 
This little pest of our fields and gardens is very small, and of a dull red color, looking 
exactly like a grain of cayenne pepper as it glides across a leaf. It is seldom seen until J une 
or July, and is most common in the autumn, in some places swarming to such an extent that 
the leaves are actually reddened by their numbers. They are especially plentiful on the 
French bean ; and I well remember that when I was a little boy I was horribly tortured by the 
Harvest-bugs, which came from the leaves of the French beans among which I was employed, 
and, crawling over my shoes, left a scarlet ring of intolerable irritation round my ankles. 
While we are walking through the stubble-fields, the Harvest-bug is terribly apt to make 
successful attacks upon our ankles ; and in the case of persons endowed with a very tender 
skin almost drives the sufferer to the verge of madness. Gilbert White, in his Natural His- 
tory,” tells us that warreners are a so much infested by them on chalky downs, where these 
insects swarm sometimes to so infinite a degree, as to discolor their nets and to give them 
a reddish cast, while the men are so bitten as to be thrown into fevers.” 
The Harvest-bug does not confine its attacks to human beings, but equally infests horses, 
dogs, sheep, and rabbits. It burrows under the skin in a very short space of time, and after a 
little while a red pustule arises, sometimes as large as a pea, occasioning great irritation at the 
time, and much pain if it be broken or wounded. On account of its led color, the Fiench 
call the Harvest-bug the Rouget. 
A batheb pretty species is called Ixodes venustus . It derives the name of venustum, 
or beautiful, in consequence of the pretty coloring of its surface. The ground color of this 
creature is deep black, upon which are set some patches of rich orange-red, edged with yellow. 
The little lines arranged round the body are also yellow, and its legs are red. It is moderately 
large, being about one-sixth of an inch in length. 
Two species are parasitic upon the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus, and derive theii 
name from the creatures which they infest. The Hippopotamus-mite, or Tick, as it is some- 
times wrongly called, is of pale straw color above, and deep liver-red below, the limbs being of 
the same color as the upper surface, but rather paler. The lines and streaks upon the body 
