136 
tinople. They were afterwards brought by the 
Moors into Spain, and were brought into France by 
the followers of Charles the Eighth, after his con- 
quest of Naples. Queen Elizabeth first introduced 
silk stockings to the royal wardrobe. The substance 
has exercised the industry of thousands; I might 
say of many millions, including Europeans and Asia- 
tics?. The wax of bees, used in medicine, for 
candles, &c. is also a considerable article of com- 
merce ; and the dried bodies of cochineal insects are 
said to be imported into Europe for purposes of dye- 
ing, painting, and japanning, in quantity amounting 
to the weight of near a million of pounds. The 
Spanish flies, lytta vesicatoria, green beetles, killed 
by fumes of hot vinegar and dried in the sun, de- 
stined wholly for blisters, are imported in vast num- 
bers from Italy and Spain. 
Gnats, mosquitoes, chigoes, fleas, bugs, lice, wasps, 
hornets, even bees, occasionally give severe annoy- 
ance by their stings, or bites. They employ their 
weapons, and their poisons also, against one another 
very extensively. The libellulz prey generally with 
great rapacity 4 on most other insects. Wasps and 
P In May 1795. Sir F. M. Eden thus notices the silk-manufacture 
of Derby: ‘‘ There are twelve mills, which give employment to 
about 1000 people, chiefly women and children ;” above one tenth 
of the whole population. 
4 Scarcely any, perhaps none, are exempt from their peculiar 
parasites, which tend to reduce their rapidly increasing popula- 
tion, 
‘** Fleas have lesser fleas to bite ‘em, 
‘** And so proceed ad infinitum.” 
