The ravages of these insects are so insidious, that travellers frequently suffer irreparable damage before they are aware of them. When they are previously informed, the depredations of those insects may be greatly prevented; but constant care and caution are required, which is no small addition to the number of cares that a collector must always have upon his mind. I shall not pretend to go any further into the history of this genus of insects, as I must necessarily borrow it from my ingenious friend's very entertaining account of them, published last year in the seventy-first volume, Part I. of the Philosophical Transactions, to which I refer my reader. To these obstacles, Mr. Smeathman adds others, some of which we can have little idea of in these climates. The _Norway rats_ are so numerous and so bold, that they will come and feed by the side of the table at supper, and during the still hours of night, search every corner for plunder, making a continual uproar, and often, in a kind of furor, carry away small utensils, and other articles, which they can turn to no advantage either for food or shelter. They are very mischievous to the naturalist's collection of plants and seeds, tearing them and the books, in which they are kept, to pieces, as it were in wantonness, and carrying away such as are edible, in which they are often assisted by the land-crabs. These amphibious insects frequently make holes for themselves, or use those made by the rats under ground, and enter through the floors of the negroes' cottages. In the rainy seasons many small animals are apt to take shelter in the thatch; among others, _various species of snakes_, who most probably get there in pursuit of the rats. Mr. Smeathman when on the African shore observed, that the former were very harmless; and, as he found the latter very mischievous and destructive, he would not suffer the snakes to be killed or hunted out. The patient natives there, it seems, as well as the rational travellers, are not without consolation amidst this heterogeneous crowd of inmates. They see with pleasure the spiders always on the watch for the wasps and cock-roaches, the last of which are intolerable. The _lizards_, again, attack all sorts of insects, the large Tarantula, as it is called, not excepted. The lizards not unfrequently fall a prey to the _fowls_, and the rats to the snakes. Hence lizards, rats, snakes, and land-crabs occasionally serve as delicious repasts to the improvident inhabitants, who thus "thrive under evil." Sometimes indeed the land-crab becomes, as in the West Indies, a part of the stock of the provident and luxurious inhabitants, who inclose a small piece of ground in the manner {vi}of a yard, and feed them with fruit, herbs, Indian corn, and other grain, on which they fatten exceedingly, and stewed in any manner are most delicious eating.