INSECTS IN INDIA
Noise of insects at night. Troublesome in the evening. The
blister-fly. Bees. Wasps. Cockroaches. Ants in the bungalow.
White ants. Scorpions; their sting. Boys callous of the
feelings of insects. Bugs. Spiders. Mosquitoes. The
mosquito-net. Flies. The eye-fly. Insects resembling their
surroundings. Butterflies. The praying mantis.
Amidst the many sounds of the restless Indian night, some far away,
some near at hand, there is one which, when it commences, drowns all
the rest. It is a harsh, metallic, rasping, shrill, unmusical sound.
It might seem as if it had to do with some machinery, except that it
is unlike the sound of any machine that you ever heard. It begins in
the room where you are sitting reading, or else out in the verandah,
where you are enjoying the cooler breeze of evening. Loud as it is,
you cannot locate it. At one moment you think it is up aloft amongst
the rafters, at another moment it seems to be close by. It emanates
from an uninteresting-looking brown insect, about an inch long, who
makes prodigious jumps like a grasshopper. One night when this din
was so great that conversation was almost impossible, I was astonished
to find that the insect was on the table, only a few inches away from
my book, and I was able to see his method of making this sound. He was
vibrating his horny wing-cases with marvellous rapidity, producing
such an amount of noise that, unless one had seen it in process of
production, it would have seemed impossible that it could arise from
such a humble source.
At certain seasons, and especially when it is warm and damp, the
evening meal in the country is attended with difficulty because of the
quantity of insects, especially beetles, which are attracted by the
lamp, and they appear to make a specialty of falling into any dish
which may be at hand. When camping out the difficulty is intensified,
and the only thing to be done is to put the lamp at a distance and to
dine in comparative darkness. Such a variety of insects come that an
entomologist might make quite a respectable collection in the course
of one night. One of these evening visitors after the rains is a long,
slim beetle, green, or sometimes buff in colour, with a small head
which fits loosely into his body. He twists his head about as if his
collar was uncomfortable. When alarmed he exudes a strong acid which
at once raises a blister. He is the more dangerous because, flying in
rapidly, he often alights on your collar or neck, and the action of
brushing him off causes the emission of the acid, and the blister
follows.
In the daytime, bees, black and hairy, immense in size, and making a
noise like a threshing-machine, come banging in at the open windows.
They are not as formidable as they look, except in their own domains,
and they quickly depart in response to indications that they are not
wanted. They know their way out without difficulty, which is contrary
to the experience of most intruding animals.
A solitary wasp is apt to select inconvenient places in which to build
a mud-cell wherein to deposit its egg, and the store of live
caterpillars destined to be the food of its young when hatched. You
find a keyhole, or the tap of a filter, filled with mud as the result
of this wasp's labours. It works so rapidly that it generally
completes its job in the course of a day. An even more inconvenient
site for its nest is the sleeve of a garment left hanging on a peg,
especially if you put the garment on while the wasp is at work. A
small colony of social wasps built their comb under the refectory
table of the village Mission-house. They were so determined to remain
that for some months they resisted all attempts to get rid of them,
returning as often as they were dispersed.
Cockroaches, some of great size, abound in most houses, and are very
destructive. They nibble the bindings of books, and cut quaint
devices, which look almost as if they had been done with a pair of
scissors, in clothes put away in drawers. They run at an amazing pace
when they think they are in danger.
Jet black ants, enormously big and warlike in appearance, come into
bungalows, sometimes in unpleasantly large numbers, to see what they
can pick up. They are not really aggressive, nor do they do any
particular mischief. Another kind of ant, very like an ordinary
English one though smaller, is a great trial to housekeepers. They get
into the bread and sugar and other stores, and though cupboards are
generally set in saucers of water on account of insect depredators,
these ants often manage to get in.
White ants are most destructive in a house if it is built of materials
which they can deal with. In the case of many houses in India, mud is
used instead of mortar, and the structure suffers greatly if the white
ants take possession. All woodwork, including furniture, ought to be
of teak, because they are unable to burrow into it. Sound hard floors
are necessary, so that when ants try to work their way upwards they
may find their road blocked. Otherwise, in the course of one night,
they will eat large holes in a mat or carpet, coming up from beneath.
They make havoc in a library if they get amongst the books. Many
ant-heaps out in the country are so large as to be conspicuous
objects.
Scorpions may be found anywhere. In your bedding, in your boots, in
your clothes, under your books and, out of doors, chiefly under
stones. You soon get into the way of prudently shaking each garment
before putting it on. The scorpion averages about two inches in
length, but they vary a good deal in size, and also in colour. They
much resemble a little lobster in appearance. Their sting is not
dangerous under ordinary circumstances, but the pain is great, and
resembles a blow on the funny bone, continuing acute for some hours.
The boys, sleeping on the floor and having bare feet, get stung now
and then, and generally make great lamentations over the misfortune.
Indian boys are like many English rustics in their disregard for the
feelings of animals--they appear honestly to think that they have
none--and they delight in forming a chain of scorpions by making them
grip each other, which they do fiercely, and hang on tenaciously. Boys
will also nip off the end of their tail to prevent them from stinging,
and leave them in this maimed condition.
Wherever Indians live, bugs are invariably found. Hence in schools
where many Indian children are gathered together these insects are
sure to find an entrance, in spite of vigilant care and cleanliness.
When the small boys of the Mission moved out from their old quarters
in the city, which like all old native houses was much infested,
immense pains were taken to make sure that no bug was transported to
the new home in the country. But it was not long before these
intruders showed themselves in the new house. Possibly they fulfil
some useful but at present unknown function as destroyers of microbes.
Spiders are much in evidence, and some are very large and fierce. Out
in the country I once fairly ran away from a great spider, which made
for my foot with a courage and ferocity such as one would not expect
to find in an animal of the kind. But they are not altogether
unwelcome in a house, because they help to keep down the population of
the insect world. There is a handsome little spider who spins no web,
and roves about, and springs on its victim like a tiger.
Mosquitoes are the most troublesome insects to be found in the
tropics, although some districts are much more infested than others.
There are several different kinds. The one that causes the most
irritation is smaller than the average English gnat. They are
veritable bloodsuckers, and the amount of blood which a mosquito can
imbibe is astonishing. They may be seen so distended after their
night's work that they can scarcely fly. Newcomers from England are
their special prey, and their bites often cause a good deal of
inflammation. The loud hum with which they approach is almost as
disturbing as their bite. Most English people have nets of fine gauze
surrounding their beds, and some Indians have adopted the same
precaution since the promulgation of the theory that the bite of an
infected mosquito is the cause of malarial fever. Natives when they
sleep, generally roll themselves up completely, head and all, in a
_dhota_, which they use then after the manner of a sheet. The
mosquito-nets cut off a good deal of air, and people are tempted to
discard them unwisely when the nights are intensely hot. The
framework from which the nets depend is a frail counterpart of the
four-poster of the Victorian age. The net is usually tucked in under
the mattress, to prevent any possibility of the mosquito entering. In
places where mosquitoes abound they are troublesome by day as well as
by night, and they are specially fond of attacking the ankles of
persons seated at table.
Towards the close of the rainy season flies become numerous almost
everywhere, but especially in a native city like Poona, and they are
an unpleasant indication of its unsavoury condition. They fall into
your cup, the table is black with them, your food becomes a matter of
dispute between you and them. But out of doors, except at meal-time in
camp, they are not nearly so aggressive as the summer flies which buzz
around during a country walk in England. Though they could be
dispensed with without regret, they are probably of great value as
scavengers.
There is a very small fly which is popularly known as the "eye-fly,"
because it hovers in front of your eye like a troublesome person who
will not take a refusal. It apparently thinks that the pupil is the
entrance into some desirable chamber. Fortunately it rarely gets
beyond the stage of prospecting this supposed entrance. Now and then
it travels round to your ear and prospects there also. But though it
does so at a safe distance it makes an irritating hum, and it is so
small that attempts to flap it away are futile.
There are many striking instances in India of insects being protected
from their enemies by their likeness in colour and markings to the
tree or plant on which they feed. The most noteworthy example of this
is a long insect, so precisely similar to a bit of dry stick that,
until you actually see it walk, you can hardly believe that it can be
anything else.
Butterflies, in the Poona district at any rate, are disappointing.
They are larger than the English ones--the scale of most things in
India is big--but their colours are not strikingly brilliant. Some of
the large moths are handsome, but not more so than many of the English
nocturnal moths.
The most comical insect is the praying mantis. It is of a fresh green
colour, often three or four inches long, and something like a
grasshopper in appearance. When it alights on your table in the
evening, attracted by the lamp, it behaves in a seemingly ridiculous
way. It puts its long front legs together as if praying, and sways
about as it does so in an absurdly affected fashion, reminiscent of
Thackeray's description of Charles Honeyman in the pulpit.