- And with fell rage the stranger-guest assail, [335]
- Nor spare the sportive child; from their retreats
- Cockroaches crawl displeasingly abroad:
- These, without pity, let thy slaves destroy;
- (Like Harpies,1 they defile whate’er they touch:)
- While those, the smother of combustion quells. [340]
- The speckled lizard to its hole retreats,
VER. 334. sand-flies,] This insect the Spaniards call Mosquitilla, being much smaller than the Mosquito. Its bite is like a spark of fire, falling on the skin, which it raises into a small tumour accompanied with itching. But if the sand-fly causes a sharper and more sudden pain than the Mosquito, yet it is a more honourable enemy, for remaining upon the skin after the puncture, it may easily be killed. Its colour is grey and black, striped. Lemon-juice or first runnings cure its bite.
VER. 337. Cockroaches crawl] This is a large species of the chafer, or scaribaeus, and is a most disagreeable as well as destructive insect. There is scarce any thing which it will not devour, and wherever it has remained for any time, it leaves a nauseous smell behind it. Though better than an inch long, their thickness is no ways correspondent, so that they can insinuate themselves almost through any crevise, &c. into cabinets, drawers, &c. The smell of cedar is said to frighten them away, but this is a popular mistake, for I have often killed them in presses of that wood. There is a species of Cockroach, which, on account of a beating noise which it makes, especially in the night, is called the Drummer.2 Though larger, it is neither of so burnished a colour, nor so quick in its motions as the common sort, than which it is also less frequent, and not so pernicious; yet both will nibble peoples toe-ends, especially if not well washed, and have sometimes occasioned uneasy sores there. They are natives of a warm climate. The French call them Ravets.
VER. 341. the speckled lizard] This is meant of the ground-lizard, and not of the tree-lizard, which is of a fine green colour. There are many kinds of ground-lizards, which, as they are common in the hot parts of Europe, I shall not describe.