smallest
particle of the insect. Their numbers exceed all calculation; the table is
actually darkened by the myriads, particularly in the season of the
periodical rains. The Natives of India use muslin curtains suspended from
the ceiling of their hall at meal times, which are made very full and long,
so as to enclose the whole dinner party and exclude their tormentors.

The biles or blains, which all classes of people in India are subject to,
may be counted as amongst the catalogue of Pharaoh's plagues. The most
healthy and the most delicate, whether Europeans or Natives, are equally
liable to be visited by these eruptions, which are of a painful and
tedious nature. The causes inducing these biles no one, as yet, I believe,
has been able to discover, and therefore a preventive has not been found.
I have known people who have suffered every year from these attacks, with
scarce a day's intermission during the hot weather.[2]

The musquitoes, a species of gnat, tries the patience of the public in no
very measured degree; their malignant sting is painful, and their attacks
incessant; against which there is no remedy but patience, and a good gauze
curtain to the beds. Without some such barrier, foreigners could hardly
exist; certainly they never could enjoy a night's repose. Even the mere
buzzing of musquitoes is a source of much annoyance to Europeans: I have
heard many declare the bite was not half so distressing as the sound. The
Natives, both male and female, habitually wrap themselves up so entirely
in their chuddah[3] (sheet) that they escape from these voracious insects,
whose sounds are so familiar to them that it may be presumed they lull to,
rather than disturb their sleep.

The white ant is a cruel destroyer of goods: where it has once made its
domicile, a real misfortune may be considered to have visited the house.
They are the most destructive little insects in the world doing as much
injury in one hour as a man might labour through a long life to redeem.
These ants, it would seem, have no small share of animosity to ladies'
finery, for many a wardrobe have they demolished, well filled with
valuable dresses and millinery, before their vicinity has even been
suspected, or their traces discovered. They destroy beams in the roofs of
houses, chests of valuable papers, carpets, mats, and furniture, with a
dispatch which renders them the most formidable of enemies, although to
appearance but a mean little insect.