th
inflicts a wound and emits a booming sound, in both of which particulars
it accords with the mosquito (lib. iv, 51); and PHILO-JUDAEUS, in his
_Vita Mosis_, lib. i. ch. xxiii., descanting on the plague of flies, and
using the term of the Septuagint, [Greek: kunomyia], describes it as
combining the characteristic of "the most impudent of all animals, the
fly and the dog, exhibiting the courage and the cunning of both, and
fastening on its victim with the noise and rapidity of an
arrow"--[Greek: meta roizou kathaper belos]. This seems to identify the
dog-fly of the Septuagint with the description of the Psalmist, Ps.
lxxviii. 45, and to vindicate the conjecture that the tormenting
mosquito, and not the house-fly, was commissioned by the Lord to humble
the obstinacy of the Egyptian tyrant.]

Even in the midst of endurance from their onslaughts one cannot but be
amused by the ingenuity of their movements; as if aware of the risk
incident to an open assault, a favourite mode of attack is, when
concealed by a table, to assail the ankles through the meshes of the
stocking, or the knees which are ineffectually protected by a fold of
Russian duck. When you are reading, a mosquito will rarely settle on
that portion of your hand which is within range of your eyes, but
cunningly stealing by the underside of the book fastens on the wrist or
little finger, and noiselessly inserts his proboscis there. I have
tested the classical expedient recorded by Herodotus, who states that
the fishermen inhabiting the fens of Egypt, cover their beds with their
nets, knowing that the mosquitoes, although they bite through linen
robes, will not venture through a net.[1] But, notwithstanding the
opinion of Spence[2], that nets with meshes an inch square will
effectually exclude them, I have been satisfied by painful experience
that (if the theory be not altogether fallacious) at least the modern
mosquitoes of Ceylon are uninfluenced by the same considerations which
restrained those of the Nile under the successors of Cambyses.

[Footnote 1: HERODOTUS, _Euterpe._ xcv.]

[Footnote 2: KIRBY and SPENCE'S _Entomology_, letter iv.]

_The Coffee-Bug_.--Allusion has been made in a previous passage to the
coccus known in Ceylon as the "Coffee-Bug" (_Lecanium Caffeae_, Wlk.),
which of late years has made such destructive ravages in the plantations
in the Mountain Zone.[1] The first thing that attracts attention on
looking at a coffee tree infested by it