ODLE

LETTER IV.

INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS.

DIRECT INJURIES.

IN the letter which I devoted to the defence of Entomology, I gave you reason to expect, more effectually to obviate the objection drawn from the supposed insignificance of insects, that I should enter largely into the question of their importance to us both as instruments of good and evil. This I shall now attempt; and, as I wish to leave upon your mind a pleasant impression with respect to my favourites, I shall begin with the last of these subjects-the injury which they do to us.

The Almighty ordains various instruments for the punishment of offending nations: sometimes he breaks them to pieces with the iron rod of war; at others the elements are let loose against them; earthquakes and floods of fire, at his word, bring sudden destruction upon them; seasons unfriendly to vegetation threaten them with famine; the blight and mildew realize these threats; and often, the more to manifest and glorify his power, he employs means, at first sight, apparently the most insignificant and inadequate to effect their ruin; the numerous tribes of insects are his armies 2, marshalled by him, and by his irresistible command impelled to the work of destruction: where he directs them they lay

waste the earth, and famine and the pestilence often follow in their train.

us,

The generality of mankind overlook or disregard these powerful, because minute, dispensers of punishment; seldom considering in how many ways their welfare is affected by them: but the fact is certain, that should it please God to give them a general commission against and should he excite them to attack, at the same time, our bodies, our clothing, our houses, our cattle, and the produce of our fields and gardens, we should soon be reduced, in every possible respect, to a state of extreme wretchedness; the prey of the most filthy and disgusting diseases, divested of a covering, unsheltered, except by caves and dungeons, from the inclemency of the seasons, exposed to all the extremities of want and famine, and in the end, as Sir Joseph Banks, speaking on this subject, has well observed 2, driven with all the larger animals from the face of the earth. You may smile, perhaps, and think this a high-coloured picture, but you will recollect-I am not stating the mischiefs that insects commonly do, but what they would do according to all probability, if certain counter-checks restraining them within due limits had not been put in action; and which they actually do, as you will see, in particular cases, when those counter-checks are diminished or removed.

Insects may be said, without hyperbole, to have established a kind of universal empire over the earth and its inhabitants. This is principally conspicuous in the injuries which they occasion, for nothing in nature that possesses or has possessed animal or vegetable life, is safe from their inroads. Neither the cunning of the fox, nor a On the Blight in Corn, p. 9.

the swiftness of the horse or deer, nor the strength of the buffalo, nor the ferocity of the lion or tiger, nor the armour of the rhinoceros, nor the giant bulk or sagacity of the elephant, nor even the authority of imperial man, who boasts himself to be the lord of all, can secure them from becoming a prey to these despised beings. The air affords no protection to the birds, nor the water to the fish; insects pursue them all to their most secret conclaves and strongest citadels, and compel them to submit to their sway. Flora's empire is still more exposed to their cruel domination and ravages; and there is scarcely one of her innumerable subjects, from the oak, the glory of the forest, to the most minute lichen that grows upon its trunk, that is not destined to be the food of these next to nonentities in our estimation. And when life departs from man, the inferior animals, or vegetables, they become universally, sooner or later, the inheritance of insects.

I shall principally bespeak your attention to the injuries in question as they affect ourselves. These may be divided into direct and indirect. By direct injuries I mean every species of attack upon our own persons, and by indirect, such as are made upon our property. To the former of these I shall confine myself in the present

letter.

Insects, as to their direct attacks upon us, may be arranged in three principal classes. Those, namely, which seek to make us their food; those whose object is to prevent or revenge an injury which they either fear, or have received from us; and those which indeed offer us no violence, but yet incommode us extremely in other ways.

I hope I shall not too much offend your delicacy if I begin the first class of our insect assailants with a very disgusting genus, which Providence seems to have created to punish inattention to personal cleanliness. But though this pest of man must not be wholly passed over, yet, since it is unfortunately too well known, it will not be at all necessary for me to enlarge upon its history. I shall only mention one fact which shows the astonishingly rapid increase of these animals, where they have once gotten possession. It is a vulgar notion, that a louse in twentyfour hours may see two generations; but this is rather overshooting the mark. Leeuwenhoek, whose love for science overcame the nausea that such creatures are apt to excite, proves that their nits or eggs are not hatched till the eighth day after they are laid, and that they do not themselves commence laying before they are a month old. He ascertained, however, that a single female louse may, in eight weeks, witness the birth of five thousand descendants. You remember how wolves were extirpated from this country, but perhaps never suspected any monarch of imposing a tribute of lice upon his subjects. Yet we are gravely told that in Mexico and Peru such a poll-tax was exacted, and that bags full of these treasures were found in the palace of Montezuma !!! Were our own taxes paid in such coin, what little grumbling would there be!

Two other species of this genus, besides the common louse, are, in this country, parasites upon the human body But already I seem to hear you exclaim, "Why

Leeuw. Epist. 98. 1696.

Bingley, Anim. Biogr. first edition, iii. 437. St. Pierre's Studies, &c. i. 312.

dwell so long on creatures so odious and nauseating, whose injuries are confined to the profanum vulgus ? Leave them therefore to the canaille-they are nothing to us." Not so fast, my friend-recollect what historians and other writers have recorded concerning the Phthiriasis or pedicular disease, and you must own that, for the quelling of human pride, and to pull down the high conceits of mortal man, this most loathsome of all maladies, or one equally disgusting, has been the inheritance of the rich, the wise, the noble, and the mighty; and in the list of those that have fallen victims to it, you will find poets, philosophers, prelates, princes, kings, and emperors. It seems more particularly to have been a judgement of God upon oppression and tyranny, whether civil or religious. Thus the inhuman Pheretima mentioned by Herodotus, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Dictator Sylla, the two Herods, the Emperor Maximin, and, not to mention more, the great persecutor of the Protestants, Philip the Second, were carried off by it.

I say by this malady, or one equally disgusting, because it is not by any means certain, though some learned men have so supposed, that all these instances, and others of a similar nature, standing also upon record are to be referred to the same specific cause; since there is very sufficient reason for thinking that at least three different descriptions of insects are concerned in the various cases that have been handed down to us under the common name of Phthiriasis. As the subject of maladies connected with insects, or produced by them, is both curious and interesting, although no writer, that I am aware of, has given it full consideration, and at the same time falls in with my general design, I hope you will not