Capt. Clarke, in his passage from Dublin to Chester, on the 2d of September, 1733, met with a cloud “of flying insects of various sorts,” which stuck about the rigging of the vessel in a surprising manner.[1244] De Geer, chamberlain to the King of Sweden, writes (iv. 63) that in January, 1749, at Leufsta, in Sweden, and in three or four neighboring parishes, the snow was covered with living worms and insects of various kinds. The people assured him they fell with the snow, and he was shown several that had dropped on people’s hats. He caused the snow to be removed from places where these worms had been seen, and found several which seemed to be on the surface of the snow which had fallen before, and were covered by the succeeding. It was impossible that they could have come there from under the ground, which was then frozen more than three feet deep, and absolutely impervious to such insects. In 1750, he again discovered vast quantities of insects on the snow, which covered a large frozen lake some leagues from Stockholm. Preceding and accompanying both these falls of insects were violent storms that had torn up trees by the roots, and carried away to a great distance the surrounding earth, and at the same time the insects which had taken up their winter quarters in it.[1245] These insects were chiefly _Brachyptera_ L., _Aphodii_, Spiders, caterpillars, and particularly the larvæ of the _Telephorus fuscus_.[1246] Another shower of insects is recorded to have fallen in Hungary, November 20, 1672;[1247] another, also, in the newspapers of July 2d, 1810, to have fallen in France the January preceding, accompanied by a shower of red snow.[1248] In the Muses Threnodie, p. 213, we read that “many are the instances, even to this day, of charms practised among the vulgar, especially among the Highlands, attended with forms of prayer. In the Miscellaneous MS., written by Baillie Dundee, among several medicinal receipts I find an exorcism against all kinds of worms in the body, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to be repeated three mornings, as a certain remedy.”[1249] The Guahibo, Humboldt says, that “eats everything that exists above, and everything under ground,” eats insects, and particularly scolopendras and worms.[1250] The same traveler also says he has seen the Indian children drag out of the earth centipedes eighteen inches long, and more than half an inch broad, and devour them.[1251]