3 66 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
And now we come to the consideration of the last class of animated beings 
of which it is necessary to treat in this brief description of the Natural History 
of British Central Africa—the insects : that class which seems to have been 
created for an almost wholly evil purpose. If the old idea still prevailed that 
the Evil principle was personified by a fallen deity one might well imagine 
that the class of insects was his contribution to the life of this planet. This 
idea certainly prevailed amongst the Semitic people of antiquity who called 
Beelzebub “ the King of the Flies.” From the point of view of man and most 
other mammals insects are the one class among their fellow creatures which are 
uniformly hostile and noxious. And this feeling that they were to be combated 
as the enemies of creation seems to have perpetually actuated the development 
of group after group of new creatures to prey on insects. Fish crawled out 
of the water to pursue primeval insects and became amphibians. Amphibians 
developed into reptiles and into mammals in the same pursuit, reptiles gave 
birth to Pterodactyls and to birds so that this hated Arthropod might be 
followed through the air; and mammals for the same end took to flight in the 
form of bats. Birds almost more than any other class have nobly devoted 
themselves to keeping down insects, and for this reason among many others 
deserve the gratitude and support of humanity to whom the insect tribe is 
almost more repellent and more hurtful than it is to less sensitive beings. 
Mr. H. G. Wells, in his interesting book of imaginative foresight, The Time 
Machine , has hinted at the awful development of insects which might ensue 
when these checks to their expansion were removed. When one reads of the 
many windmills at which philanthropy wastes, its time in tilting one longs for 
some Peter the Hermit of Science to arise and preach a crusade against insects. 
With the doubtful exception of the bee (and honey nowadays can be made 
artificially—is made artificially whether we like it or no) and the Cochineal 
Aphis (now supplanted by aniline dyes), I cannot call to mind one insect that 
is of any benefit to man. Even when the perfect insect exhibits bright colours 
or pleasing patterns, as in butterflies or beetles, it is on so small a scale that the 
effect almost requires to be looked at through a magnifying glass, and even 
then is paltry compared to the effulgence of birds or the beauty of certain 
mollusca, and at any rate is more than balanced on the debtor side by the 
mischief wrought in the larval stages: while in the bugs the contemplation 
of a certain garish brightness of colour or quaintness of pattern is turned into 
loathing by the fceticl smell. There are, it is true, traitors in the camp-—-insects 
that try to be on our side by devouring other insects, but if with the disappear¬ 
ance of the rest of the class those too became extinct we could dismiss them 
with perfunctory thanks, remembering how in the Secondary epoch dragon-flies 
from over encouragement grew to the inconvenient length of two feet and 
probably presumed on their size and strength to attack the small mammals 
of the period. 
To those of my readers who are not acquainted with Tropical countries and 
their insect fauna this declamation may appear strained in its tenour, but a 
prolonged residence in any part of Africa produces in one’s mind a sweeping 
hatred of the insect race, a hatred not unmixed with apprehension, a dread 
lest by some unforeseen turn in the world’s affairs the existing checks might 
fail to keep these creatures under, and that some awful development of insects 
might threaten man’s very existence by direct or indirect attack—warfare with 
his body or the attempted destruction of his food supplies. Is this hatred 
ill-founded when we think of the ravages wrought by the Phylloxera on our 
