To look at alocustin a cabinet of insects, you would not, at first sight, deem it capable of being the source of so much evil to mankind as stands on record against it. "This is but a small creature," you would say, "and the mischief which it causes cannot be far beyond the proportion of its bulk. The locusts so celebrated in history must surely be of the Indian kind mentioned by Pliny, which were three feet in length, with legs so strong that the women used them as saws. I see indeed some resemblance to the horse's head, but where are the eyes of the elephant, the neck of the bull, the horns of the stag, the chest of the lion, the belly of the scorpion, the wings of the eagle, the thighs of the camel, the legs of the ostrich, and the tail of the serpent, all of which the Arabians mention as attributes of this widely dreaded insect destroyer[377]; but of which in the insect before me I discern little or no likeness?" Yet, although this animal be not very tremendous for its size, nor very terrific in its appearance, it is the very same whose ravages have been the theme of naturalists and historians in all ages, and upon a close examination you will find it to be peculiarly fitted and furnished for the execution of itsoffice. It is armed with two pair of very strong jaws, the upper terminating in short and the lower in long teeth, by which it can both lacerate and grind its food—its stomach is of extraordinary capacity and powers—its hind legs enable it to leap to a considerable distance, and its ample vans are calculated to catch the wind as sails, and so to carry it sometimes over the sea; and although a single individual can effect but little evil, yet when the entire surface of a country is covered by them, and every one makes bare the spot on which it stands, the mischief produced may be as infinite as their numbers. So well do the Arabians know their power, that they make a locust say to Mahomet—"We are the army of the Great God; we produce ninety-nine eggs; if the hundred were completed, we should consume the whole earth and all that is in it[378]."
Since it is possible you may not have paid particular attention to the accounts given by various authors both ancient and modern, of the almost incredible injury done to the human race by these creatures, I shall now lay before you some of the most striking particulars of their devastations that I have been able to collect.
The earliest plague of this kind which has been recorded, appears also to have been the most direful in its immediate effects that ever was inflicted upon any nation. I am speaking, as you may well suppose, of the locusts with which the Egyptian tyrant and his people were visited for their oppression of the Israelites. Only conceive to yourself a country so covered by them that no one can see the face of the ground—a whole land darkened, and all its produce, whether herb or tree, sodevoured that not the least vestige of green is left in either[379].—But it is not necessary for me to enlarge further upon a history the circumstances of which are so well known to you.
To this species of devastation Africa in general seems always to have been peculiarly subject. This may be gathered from the law in Cyrenaica mentioned by Pliny, by which the inhabitants were enjoined to destroy the locusts in three different states, three times in the year—first their eggs, then their young, and lastly the perfect insect[380]. And not without reason was such a law enacted; for Orosius tells us that in the year of the world 3800, Africa was infested by such infinite myriads of these animals, that having devoured every green thing, after flying off to sea they were drowned, and being cast upon the shore they emitted a stench greater than could have been produced by the carcases of 100,000 men[381]. St. Augustine also mentions a plague to have arisen in that country from the same cause, which destroyed no less than 800,000 persons (octingenta hominum millia) in the kingdom of Masanissa alone, and many more in the territories bordering upon the sea[382].
From Africa this plague was occasionally imported into Italy and Spain; and a historian quoted in Mouffet relates that in the year 591 an infinite army of locusts of a size unusually large, grievously ravaged part of Italy; and being at last cast into the sea, from their stench arose a pestilence which carried off near a million of men andbeasts. In the Venetian territory, also, in 1478 more than 30,000 persons are said to have perished in a famine occasioned by these terrific scourges. Many other instances of their devastations in Europe, in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, &c.[383], are recorded by the same author. In 1650 a cloud of them was seen to enter Russia in three different places, which from thence passed over into Poland and Lithuania, where the air was darkened by their numbers. In some places they were seen lying dead heaped one upon another to the depth of four feet; in others they covered the surface like a black cloth, the trees bent with their weight, and the damage they did exceeded all computation[384]. At a later period in Languedoc when the sun became hot they took wing and fell upon the corn, devouring both leaf and ear, and that with such expedition that in three hours they would consume a whole field. After having eaten up the corn they attacked the vines, the pulse, the willows, and lastly the hemp notwithstanding its bitterness[385]. Sir H. Davy informs us[386]that the French government in 1813 issued a decree with a view to occasion the destruction of grasshoppers.
Even this happy island, so remarkably distinguished by its exemption from most of those scourges to which other nations are exposed, was once alarmed by the appearance of locusts. In 1748 they were observed here in considerable numbers, but providentially they soon perished without propagating. These were evidently stragglers from the vast swarms which in the preceding year did such infinite damage in Wallachia, Moldavia, Transylvania, Hungary, and Poland. One of these swarms,which entered Transylvania in August, was several hundred fathoms in width, (at Vienna the breadth of one of them was three miles,) and extended to so great a length as to be four hours in passing over the Red Tower; and such was its density that it totally intercepted the solar light, so that when they flew low one person could not see another at the distance of twenty paces[387]. A similar account has been given me by a friend of mine[388]long resident in India. He relates that when at Poonah he was witness to an immense army of locusts which ravaged the Mahratta country, and was supposed to come from Arabia (this, if correct, is a strong proof of their power to pass the sea under favourable circumstances). The column they composed, my friend was informed, extended five hundred miles; and so compact was it, when on the wing, that like an eclipse it completely hid the sun, so that no shadow was cast by any object, and some lofty tombs distant from his residence not more than two hundred yards were rendered quite invisible. This was not theLocusta migratoria, but a red species; which circumstance much increased the horror of the scene; for, clustering upon the trees after they had stripped them of their foliage, they imparted to them a sanguine hue. The peach was the last tree that they touched.
Dr. Clarke, to give some idea of the infinite numbers of these animals, compares them to a flight of snow when the flakes are carried obliquely by the wind. They covered his carriage and horses, and the Tartars assert that people are sometimes suffocated by them. The wholeface of nature might have been described as covered by a living veil. They consisted of two species,L. tataricaandmigratoria; the first is almost twice the size of the second, and, because it precedes it, is called by the Tartars the herald or messenger[389].—The account of another traveller, Mr. Barrow, of their ravages in the southern parts of Africa (in 1784 and 1797) is still more striking: an area of nearly two thousand square miles might be said literally to be covered by them. When driven into the sea by a N. W. wind, they formed upon the shore for fifty miles a bank three or four feet high, and when the wind was S. E. the stench was so powerful as to be smelt at the distance of 150 miles[390].
From 1778 to 1780 the empire of Marocco was terribly devastated by them, every green thing was eaten up, not even the bitter bark of the orange and pomegranate escaping—a most dreadful famine ensued.—The poor were seen to wander over the country deriving a miserable subsistence from the roots of plants; and women and children followed the camels, from whose dung they picked the indigested grains of barley, which they devoured with avidity: in consequence of this, vast numbers perished, and the roads and streets exhibited the unburied carcases of the dead. On this sad occasion, fathers sold their children, and husbands their wives[391]. When they visit a country, says Mr. Jackson, speaking of the same empire, it behoves every one to lay in provision for a famine, for they stay from three to seven years. When they have devoured all other vegetables, they attack the trees, consuming first the leaves and then the bark. From Mogadorto Tangier, before the plague in 1799, the face of the earth was covered by them—at that time a singular incident occurred at El Araiche. The whole region from the confines of the Sahara was ravaged by them: but on the other side of the river El Kos not one of them was to be seen, though there was nothing to prevent their flying over it. Till then they had proceeded northward; but upon arriving at its banks they turned to the east, so that all the country north of El Araiche was full of pulse, fruits and grain,—exhibiting a most striking contrast to the desolation of the adjoining district. At length they were all carried by a violent hurricane into the Western Ocean; the shore, as in former instances, was covered by their carcases, and a pestilence was caused by the horrid stench which they emitted:—but when this evil ceased, their devastations were followed by a most abundant crop. The Arabs of the Desert, "whose hands are against every man[392]," and who rejoice in the evil that befalls other nations, when they behold the clouds of locusts proceeding from the north are filled with gladness, anticipating a general mortality, which they callEl-Khere(the benediction); for, when a country is thus laid waste, they emerge from their arid deserts and pitch their tents in the desolated plains[393].
The noise the locusts make when engaged in the work of destruction has been compared to the sound of a flame of fire driven by the wind, and the effect of their bite to that of fire[394]. A wild poet of our day has very strikingly described the noise produced by their flight and approach:
"Onward they came a dark continuous cloudOf congregated myriads numberless,The rushing of whose wings was as the soundOf a broad river headlong in its coursePlunged from a mountain summit, or the roarOf a wild ocean in the autumn stormShattering its billows on a shore of rocks[395]!"
"Onward they came a dark continuous cloudOf congregated myriads numberless,The rushing of whose wings was as the soundOf a broad river headlong in its coursePlunged from a mountain summit, or the roarOf a wild ocean in the autumn stormShattering its billows on a shore of rocks[395]!"
But no account of the appearance and ravages of these terrific insects, for correctness and sublimity, comes near that of the prophet Joel, "A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong: there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations. A fire devoureth before them; and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them. Like the noise of chariots[396]on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array. Before their faces the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war, and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks; neither shall one thrust another, they shall walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword they shall not be wounded. They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shallclimb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief. The earth shall quake before them, the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining!" The usual way in which they are destroyed is also noticed by the prophet. "I will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things[397]!"
I think, after a serious consideration of all these well attested facts, when locusts contend with the two-legged destroyers of the human race for proud pre-eminence in mischief, you will find it difficult to determine to which the palm should be decreed; and you will admire the propriety with which, in the above and other passages of Holy Writ, they are selected as symbols of the great ravagers of the earth of our own species.
In many of the above instances these devastators appear to have crossed the seas, but Hasselquist asserts that they are not formed for such extensive flights. "The grasshopper or locust," says he, "is not formed for travelling over the sea,—it cannot fly far, but must alight as soon as it rises;—for one that came on board us a hundred certainly were drowned. We observe in the months of May and June a number of these insects coming from the south, and directing their course to the northern shore; they darken the sky like a thick cloud; but scarcely have they quitted the shore, when they, who a moment before ravaged and ruined the country, coverthe surface of the sea with their dead bodies.—By what instinct do these creatures undertake this dangerous flight? Is it not the wise institution of the Creator to destroy a dreadful plague to the country[398]?" Locusts however, as we have seen, take much longer flights than this author supposes them able to do. It is probable that their ability in this respect may depend a good deal upon their species, their age, and the state and direction of the wind; for, as was the case with the Egyptian plague,
"—— a pitchy cloudOf locusts warping on the eastern wind"
"—— a pitchy cloudOf locusts warping on the eastern wind"
may by a powerful blast be carried over a broad river, or even the sea, from one country to another. This idea is strongly confirmed by an account, exhibiting internal marks of authenticity, which appeared in theAlexandria Herald, an American newspaper; in which it is stated, that at the distance of 200 miles from the Canary Islands, the nearest land, the ship Georgia, Capt. Stokes, from Lisbon to Savannah, while sailing with a fine breeze from the south-east, was, on the 21st of Nov. 1811, all at once becalmed. "A light air afterwards sprang up from the north-east, at which time there fell from the cloud an innumerable quantity of large grasshoppers, so as to cover the deck, the tops and every part of the ship they could alight upon. They did not appear in the least exhausted; on the contrary, when an attempt was made to take hold of them, they instantly jumped, and endeavoured to elude being taken. The calm, or a very light air, lasted fully an hour, and during the whole of the time these insects continued to fall upon the ship and surround her: such as were within reach of the vessel alighted uponher; but immense numbers fell into the sea, and were seen floating in masses by the sides." Two bottles of them were preserved for inspection; the insects were of a reddish hue, with red and gray speckled wings. It is clear from this account, if it be admitted as authentic, that locusts can go far from land when the wind is strong, and likewise it seems equally clear that in a calm they cannot support themselves in the air. The principal difficulty is, how these locusts could make their way against the wind, which they must have done if they came with the black cloud, as the words seem to intimate. Perhaps this cloud was brought by a different current of air from that which impelled the ship.
With respect to the course which the locusts pursue, Hasselquist has observed that they migrate in a direct meridian line from south to north, passing from the deserts of Arabia, which is the great cradle of them, to Palestine, Syria, Carmania, Natolia, Bithynia, Constantinople, Poland, &c.—they never turn either to the east or to the west[399]. But this must be a mistaken notion; for those which Major Moor saw at Poonah, of which I have given an account above[400], must have come due east. Mr. Jackson also noticed their course north of the line to be towards the south[401]; and Sparrman tells us, that those south of the line migrate in the same direction[402].
I fear that Hasselquist's question, Could they not by fright, or some other method, be turned from their dreadful course, to steer for some river, and by that means be obliged to destroy themselves[403]? must be answered in the negative. All such experiments, it is to be apprehended,would be about as effectual as sending an army, with all the apparatus of war, to take the field against them, as this author says is done in Syria, where the Bashaw of Tripoli once raised a force of 4000 soldiers to fight the locusts, and very summarily ordered all to be hanged who thinking it beneath them to waste their valour upon such pygmy foes, refused to join the party[404].
I am, &c.
I have not yet arrived at the end of my catalogue of noxious insects. I have introduced you, indeed, to those that annoy man in his own person, in his domestic animals, in the produce of his fields, gardens, orchards, and forests; in a word, in every thing that is endued with the vital principle: but I have as yet said nothing of the injuries which he receives from them in that part of his property, consisting either of animal or vegetable matter,from which that principle is departed. And with these I shall conclude this melancholy detail of evils inflicted upon us by the very animals I am enticing you to study. The rest of my correspondence, I flatter myself, will paint them in more inviting colours.
The insects to which I now allude may be divided into those that attack and injure our food, our drugs and medicines, our clothes, our houses and furniture, our timber, and even the objects of our studies and amusements.
Various are those that attempt to share ourfoodwith us. Flour and meal are eaten by the grub ofTenebrio Molitor, best known by the name of the meal-worm, which will remain in it two years before it goes into its state of inactivity:—its ravages however are not confinedto flour alone, for it will eat any thing made of that article, such as bread, cakes, and the like. Old flour is also very apt to be infested by a mite (Acarus Farinæ)[405]. In long voyages the biscuit sometimes so swarms with the weevil and another beetle (Dermestes paniceus, L.) that they are swallowed with every mouthful; and even the ground peas so abound with these little vermin, that a spoonful of soup cannot be taken free from them[406]. Bread is also devoured byTrogosita caraboides, a larger beetle before alluded to[407].
Every one is aware that our animal food suffers still more than our farinaceous from insects; but perhaps you would not expect that our hams, bacon, and dried meats should have their peculiar beetle. Yet so it is; and this beetle, (Dermestes lardarius,) when a grub, sometimes commits great devastation in them; as does that of another described by De Geer under the name ofTenebrio lardarius[408]. How much our fresh meat of all kinds, our poultry and fish, are exposed to the flesh-fly, whose maggots will turn us disgusted from our tables, if we do not carefully guard these articles from being blown by them, you well know;—and assailants more violent, hornets, wasps, and the great rove-beetle, (Creophilus maxillosus)if butchers do not protect their shambles, will carry off no inconsiderable portion of their meat. A small cock-roach (Blatta lapponica) which I have taken upon our eastern coast, swarms in the huts of the Laplanders, and will sometimes annihilate in a single day, a work in which a carrion-beetle (Silpha lapponica) joins, their whole stock of dried fish[409]. The quantity of sugar that flies and wasps will devour, if they can come at it, especially the latter, the diminutive size of the creatures considered, is astonishing:—in one year long ago, when sugar was much cheaper than it is now, a tradesman told me he calculated his loss, by the wasps alone, at twenty pounds. A singular spectacle is exhibited in India (so Captain Green relates) by a small red ant with a black head. They march in long files, about three abreast, to any place where sugar is kept; and when they are saturated, return in the same order, but by a different route. If the sugar, upon which they are busy, be carried into the sun, they immediately desert it. What is very extraordinary, these ants are also fond of oil. Sweetmeats and preserves are very subject to be attacked by a minute oblong transparent mite with very short legs and without any hair upon its body. Our butter and lard are stated to be eaten by the caterpillar of a moth (Aglossa pinguinalis).Tyrophaga[410]Casei, the parent fly of the jumping cheese-maggot, loses no opportunity, we know, of laying its eggs in our fresh cheeses, and when they get dry and old the mite (Acarus Siro) settlesher colonies in them, which multiply incredibly. Other substances, more unlikely, do not escape from our pygmy depredators. Thus Reaumur tells us of a little moth whose larva feeds upon chocolate, observing very justly that this could not have been its original food[411]. Both a moth and a beetle (Sylvanus frumentarius?) were detected by Leeuwenhoek preying upon two of our spices, the mace and the nutmeg[412]. The maggots of a fly (Oscinis cellaris) are found in vinegar, in the manufactories of which the perfect insects swarm in incredible numbers; others I have found in wine, which turned to a minute fly, of a yellow colour, with dark eyes and abdomen, which though nearAnthomyiaas to its wings, appears to belong to a distinct genus not published by Meigen, which in my MS. stands under the name ofOinopota ventralis; and sometimes even water in the casks of ships, in long voyages, so abounds with larvæ of this tribe as to render it extremely disgusting. Browne, in his History of Jamaica, mentions an ant (Formica omnivora, L.) probably belonging toMyrmica, that consumes or spoils all kinds of food; which perhaps may be the same species that has been observed in Ceylon by Percival, and is described by him as inhabiting dwelling-houses, and speedily devouring every thing it can meet with. If at table any one drops a piece of bread, or of other food, it instantly appears in motion as if animated, from the vast number of these creatures that fasten upon it in order to carry it off. They can be kept, he tells us, by no contrivance from invading the table, and settling in swarms on the bread, sugar, and such things as they like. It is not uncommon to see a cup of tea, upon beingpoured out, completely covered with these creatures, and floating dead upon it like a scum[413].
In some countries the number of flies and other insects that enter the house in search of food, or allured by the light, is so great as to spoil the comfort of almost every meal. We are told that during the rainy season in India, insects of all descriptions are so incredibly numerous, and so busy every where, that it is often absolutely necessary to remove the lights from the supper-table:—were this not done, moths, flies, bugs, beetles, and the like, would be attracted in such numbers as to extinguish them entirely. When the lights are retained on the table, in some places they are put into glass cylinders, which St. Pierre tells us is the custom in the Island of Mauritius[414]; in others the candlesticks are placed in soup-plates, into which the insects are precipitated and drowned. Nothing can exceed the irritation caused by the stinking bugs when they get into the hair or between the linen and the body; and if they be bruised upon it the skin comes off[415]. To use the language of a poet of the Indies, from whom some of the above facts are selected,
"On every dish the booming beetle falls,The cock-roach plays, or caterpillar crawls:A thousand shapes of variegated huesParade the table and inspect the stews.To living walls the swarming hundreds stick,Or court, a dainty meal, the oily wick;Heaps over heaps their slimy bodies drench,Out go the lamps with suffocating stench.When hideous insects every plate defile,The laugh how empty, and how forced the smile[416]!"
"On every dish the booming beetle falls,The cock-roach plays, or caterpillar crawls:A thousand shapes of variegated huesParade the table and inspect the stews.To living walls the swarming hundreds stick,Or court, a dainty meal, the oily wick;Heaps over heaps their slimy bodies drench,Out go the lamps with suffocating stench.When hideous insects every plate defile,The laugh how empty, and how forced the smile[416]!"
Drugs and medicines also, though often so nauseous to us, form occasionally part of the food of insects. A small beetle (Sinodendrum pusillum[417]) eats the roots of rhubarb, in which I detected it in the East India Company's warehouses. Opium is a daintymorceauto the white ants[418];—and, what is more extraordinary,Anobium paniceum[419](a coleopterous insect that preys naturally upon wood) has been known to devour the blister-beetle.—Swammerdam amongst his treasures mentions "a detestable beetle," produced from a worm that eats the roots of ginseng; and he likewise notices another, the larva of which devours the bag of the musk[420].—The cochineal at Rio de Janeiro is the prey of an insect resembling an Ichneumon, but furnished with only two wings; its station is in the cotton that envelops the Coccus. Previous to its assumption of the pupa it ejects a large globule of pure red colouring matter[421]. And lastly, the Coccus that produces the lac (C. Lacca) is, we are told, devoured by various insects[422].
Perhaps you imagine that these universal destroyers spare at least our garments, in which you may at first conceive there can be nothing very tempting to excite even the appetite of an insect. Your housekeeper, however, would probably tell you a different story, and enlarge upon the trouble and pains it costs her to guardthose under her care against the ravages of the moths. Upon further inquiry you would find that nothing made of wool, whether cloth or stuff, comes amiss to them. There are five species described by Linné, which are more or less engaged in this work:Tinea vestianella,tapetzella,pellionella,Recurvaria sarcitella, andGalleria Mellonella. Of the first we have no particular history, except that it destroys garments in the summer; but of the others Reaumur has given a complete one.T. tapetzella, or the tapestry moth, not uncommon in our houses, is most injurious to the lining of carriages, which are more exposed to the air than the furniture of our apartments. These do not construct a moveable habitation like the common species, but, eating their way in the thickness of the cloth, weave themselves silken galleries in which they reside, and which they render close and warm by covering them with some of the eroded wool[423].T. pellionellais a most destructive insect, and ladies have often to deplore the ravages which it commits in their valuable furs, whether made up into muffs or tippets—it pays no more respect to the regal ermine than to the woollen habiliments of the poor; its proper food, indeed, being hair, though it devours both wool and fur. This species, if hard pressed by hunger, will even eat horsehair, and make its habitation, a moveable house or case, in which it travels from place to place, of this untractable material. These little creatures will shave the hair from a skin as neatly and closely as if a razor had been employed[424].—The most natural food of the next species,R. sarcitella, is wool; but in case of necessity it will eat fur and hair. To woollen cloths or stuffs it often doesincredible injury, especially if they are not kept dry and well aired[425]. Of the devastation committed byGalleria Mellonellain our bee-hives I have before given you an account: to this I must here add, that if it cannot come at wax, it will content itself with woollen cloth, leather, or even paper[426]. Mr. Curtis found the grub of a beetle (Ptinus Fur) in an old coat, which it devoured, making holes and channels in it; and another insect of the same order (Megatoma Pellio), Linné tells us, will sometimes entirely strip a fur garment of its hair[427]. A small beetle of the Capricorn tribe (Callidium pygmæum) I have good reason to believe devours leather, since I have found it abundant in old shoes.
Next to our garments our houses and buildings, which shelter us and our property from the inclemency and injuries of the atmosphere, are of consequence to us: yet these, solid and substantial as they appear, are not secure from the attack of insects; and even our furniture often suffers from them. A great part of our comfort within doors depends upon our apartments being kept clean and neat. Spiders by their webs, which they suspend in every angle, and flies by their excrements, which they scatter indiscriminately upon every thing, interfere with this comfort, and add much to the business of our servants. Even ants will sometimes plant their colonies in our kitchens, (I have known the horse-ant,Formica rufa, do this,) and are not easily expelled. Those of Sierra Leone, as I was once informed by the learned Professor Afzelius, make their way by millions through the houses. They resolutely pursue a straight course; and neither buildings nor rivers, even though myriads perish in theattempt, can divert them from it. Numerous are the tribes of insects that seek their food in our timber, whether laid up in store for our future use, employed in our houses, buildings, gates or fences, or made up into furniture. The several species of Mr. Marsham's genusIps(which includes the coleopterous generaApate,Bostrichus,Hylessinus,Hylurgus,Tomicus,Platypus,Scolytus, andPhloiotribusof modern systematists) all prey upon timber, feeding between the bark and the wood, and many of them excavating curious pinnated labyrinths. Almost every kind of tree has a species of this genus appropriated to it, and some have more than one[428]. The Stag-beetle tribe, orLucanidæ, and several of the weevils[429], have a similar appetite, but penetrate deeper into the wood. The most extensive family, however, of timber-borers are the capricorn beetles, including the Fabrician genera ofPrionus,Cerambyx,Lamia[430],Stenocorus,Calopus,Rhagium,Gnoma,Saperda,Callidium, andClytus. The larva of these, as soon as hatched, leaves its first station between the bark and wood, and begins to make its way into the solid timber, (some of them plunging even into the iron heart of the oak, and one even perforating lead[431],) where it eats for itself tortuouspaths, at its first starting perhaps not bigger than a pin's head, but gradually increasing in dimensions as the animal increases in magnitude, till it attains in some instances to a diameter of one or two inches. Only conceive what havoc the grub of the vastPrionus giganteusmust make in a beam! Percival is probably speaking of this beetle, when, in his account of Ceylon, he tells us, "There is an insect found here which resembles an immense over-grown beetle. It is called by us a carpenter, from its boring large holes in timber, of a regular form, and to the depth of several feet, in which, when finished, it takes up its habitation[432]." Seeing the perfect insect come out of these holes, an unentomological observer would naturally conclude that the beetle he saw had formed it, and lived in it; but, doubtless, the whole was the work of the grub[433].—Of all the coleopterous genera there is none the species of which are generally so rich, resplendent and beautiful as those ofBuprestis: these likewise, in their first state, there is abundant reason to believe, derive their nutriment from the produce of the forest, in which they sometimes remain for many years before they assume their perfect state, and appear in their full splendour, as if nature required more time than usual to decorate these lovely insects. We learn from Mr. Marsham, that the grub ofB. splendidawas ascertained to have existed in the woodof a deal table more than twenty years[434].—In this enumeration of timber-eating beetles, I must not forget the Fabrician genera,AnobiumandPtilinus, because of one of them (Anobium pertinax) Linné complains "terebravit et destruxit sedilia mea[435];" and I can renew the same complaint againstA. striatum, which not only has destroyed my chairs, but also picture-frames, and has perforated in every direction the deal floor of my chamber, from which it annually emerges through little round apertures in great numbers.—The utility of entomological knowledge in economics was strikingly exemplified, when the great naturalist just mentioned, at the desire of the king of Sweden, traced out the cause of the destruction of the oak-timber in the royal dock-yards; and, having detected the lurking culprit under the form of a beetle, (Lymexylon navale) by directing the timber to be immersed during the time of the metamorphosis of that insect and its season of oviposition, furnished a remedy which effectually secured it from its future attacks[436].—No coleopterous insects are more singular than those that belong to the genusPausus, L.; and one of them at least, remarkable for emitting a phosphoric light from the globes of its antennæ, is also a timber-feeder[437].—Amongst theHymenopterathere are many insects that injure us in this department. The species of the genusSirex, probably all of them in theirlarvastate, have no appetite but for ligneous food. Linné has observed this with respect toS. SpectrumandCamelus; and Mr. Marsham, on the authority of Sir Joseph Banks, relates thatseveral specimens ofS. Gigaswere seen to come out of the floor of a nursery in a gentleman's house, to the no small alarm and discomfiture of both nurse and children[438].—The genusTrypoxylon, many species ofCrabro,Eumenes Parietum, Latreille's generaXylocopa,Chelostoma,Heriades,MegachileandAnthophora, (all separated fromApis, L.,) perforate posts and rails and other timber, to form cells for their young[439].
The Linnean orderApterafurnishes another timber-eating insect, a kind of wood-louse, though scarcely an eighth of the size of the common one, (Limnoria terebransof Dr. Leach,) which in point of rapidity of execution seems to surpass all its European brethren, and in many cases may be productive of more serious injury than any of them, since it attacks the wood-work of piers and jetties constructed in salt-water, and so effectually, as to threaten the rapid destruction of those in which it has established itself. In December 1815 I was favoured by Charles Lutwidge, esq. of Hull, with specimens of wood from the piers at Bridlington Quay which wofully confirm the fears entertained of their total ruin by the hosts of these pygmy assailants that have made good a lodgement in them, and which, though not so big as a grain of rice, ply their masticatory organs with such assiduity as to have reduced great part of the wood-work into a state resembling honey-comb. One specimen was a portion of a three-inch fir plank nailed to the North Pier about three years since, which is now crumbled away to less than an inch in thickness—in fact, deducting the space occupied by the cells which coverboth surfaces as closely as possible, barely half an inch of solid wood is left; and though its progress is slower in oak, that wood is equally liable to be attacked by it.—If this insect were easily introduced to new stations, it might soon prove as destructive to our jetties as theTeredo navalisto those of Holland, and induce the necessity of substituting stone for wood universally, whatever the expense: but happily it seems endowed with very limited powers of migration; for, though it has spread along both the South and East Piers of Bridlington harbour, it has not yet, as Mr. Lutwidge informs me, reached the dolphin nor an insulated jetty within the harbour.—No other remedy against its attacks is known than that of keeping the wood free from salt-water for three or four days, in which case it dies; but this method it is obvious can be rarely applicable[440].
How dear are their books, their cabinets of the various productions of nature, and their collections of prints and other works of art and science, to the learned, the scientific, and the virtuosi! Even these precious treasures have their insect enemies. The larva ofAglossapinguinalis, whose ravages in another quarter I have noticed before[441], will establish itself upon the binding of a book, and spinning a robe, which it covers with its own excrement[442], will do it no little injury. A mite (Cheyletus eruditus) eats the paste that fastens the paper over the edges of the binding, and so loosens it[443]. I have also often observed the caterpillar of another little moth, of which I have not ascertained the species, that takes its station in damp old books, between the leaves, and there commits great ravages; and many a black-letter rarity, which in these days of Bibliomania would have been valued at its weight in gold, has been snatched by these destroyers from the hands of book-collectors. The little wood-boring beetles before mentioned (Anobium pertinaxandstriatum) also attack books, and will even bore through several volumes. M. Peignot mentions an instance where, in a public library but little frequented,twenty-sevenfolio volumes were perforated in a straight line by the same insect, (probably one of these species,) in such a manner that on passing a cord through the perfectly round hole made by it, these twenty-seven volumes could be raised at once[444]. The animals last mentioned also destroy prints and drawings, whether framed, or preserved in a porte-feuille. Our collections of quadrupeds, birds, insects and plants have likewise several terrible insect enemies, which without pity or remorse often destroy or mutilate our most highly prized specimens.Ptinus FurandAnthrenus Musæorum, two minute beetles, are amongst the worst, especially thelatter, whose singular gliding larva, when once it gets amongst them, makes astonishing havoc, the birds soon shedding their feathers, and the insects falling to pieces. Mr. W. S. MacLeay informs me that at the Havana it is exceedingly difficult to preserve insects, &c., as theantsdevour every thing.—One of the worst plagues of the entomologist is a mite (Acarus Destructor, Schrank): this, if his specimens be at all damp, eats up all the muscular parts, (Cantharis vesicatoriabeing almost the only insect that is not to its taste,) and thus entirely destroys them.—If spiders by any means get amongst them, they will do no little mischief.—Some I have observed to be devoured by a minute moth, perhapsTinea Insectella; and in the posterior thighs of a species ofLocustafrom China, I once found, one in each thigh, a small beetle congenerous withAntherophagus pallens, that had devoured the interior. It is, I believe, eitherAcarus DestructororCheyletus eruditusthat eats the gum employed to fasten down dried plants.
There are other insects which do not confine themselves to one or two articles, but make a general and indiscriminate attack upon our dead stock. Ulloa mentions one peculiar to Carthagena, called there thecomegen, which he describes as a kind of moth or maggot so minute as to be scarcely visible to the naked eye[445]. This destroys, says he, the furniture of houses, particularly all kinds of hangings, whether of cloth, linen, or silk, gold or silver stuffs or lace; in short, every thing except solid metal. It will in a single night ruin all the goods of a warehouse in which it has got footing, reducing balesof merchandize to dust without altering their appearance, so that the mischief is not perceived till they come to be handled[446]. If we make some deduction from this account for exaggeration, still the amount of damage will be very considerable.
There are three kinds of insects better known, to whose ravages, as most prominent and celebrated, I shall last call your attention. The insects I mean are the cock-roach (Blatta orientalis), the house-cricket (Gryllus domesticus), and the various species of white ants (Termes). The last of these, most fortunately for us, are not yet naturalized.
The cock-roaches hate the light, at least the kind that is most abundant in Britain, (forB. germanica, which abounds in some houses, is bolder, making its appearance in the day, and running up the walls and over the tables, to the great annoyance of the inhabitants,) and never come forth from their hiding-places till the lights are removed or extinguished. In the London houses, especially on the ground-floor, they are most abundant, and consume every thing they can find, flour, bread, meat, clothes, and even shoes[447]. As soon as light, natural or artificial, re-appears, they all scamper off as fast as they can, and vanish in an instant. These pests are not indigenous here, and perhaps no where in Europe, but are one of the evils which commerce has imported: and we may think ourselves well off that others of the larger species of the genus have not been introduced in the same way—as, for instance,Blatta gigantea, a native of Asia, Africa, and America, many times the size of the common one,—which, not content with devouringmeat, clothes and books, even attacks persons in their sleep, and the extremities of the dead and dying[448].
The house-cricket may perhaps be deemed a still more annoying insect than the common cock-roach, adding an incessant noise to its ravages; since, although, for a short time, it may not be unpleasant to hear