The Universal Dominion of Insects--Mosquitoes--Stinging Flies-- _Œstrus Hominis_--The Chegoe or Jigger--The _Filaria Medinensis_-- The Bête-Rouge--Blood-sucking Ticks--Garapatas--The Land-leeches in Ceylon--The Tsetsé Fly--The Tsalt-Salya--The Locust--Its dreadful Devastations--Cockroaches--The Drummer--The Cucarachas and Chilicabras--Tropical Ants--The Saüba--The Driver Ants-- Termites--Their wonderful Buildings--The Silkworm--The Cochineal-- The Gumlac Insect--Insects used as Food and Ornaments. The insect tribes may, without exaggeration, be affirmed to hold a kind of universal empire over the earth and its inhabitants, for nothing that possesses, or has possessed, life is secure from their attacks. They vanquish the cunning of the fox, the bulk of the elephant, the strength of the lion; they plague the reindeer of the northern tundras, and the antelope of the African wilds; and all the weapons with which Nature has furnished the higher orders of animals against their mightier foes prove ineffectual against these puny persecutors, whose very smallness serves to render them invincible. How numerous are the sufferings they entail on man! How manifold the injuries they inflict on his person or his property! To secure himself from their attacks, a perpetual warfare, an ever-wakeful vigilance, is necessary; for, though destroyed by thousands, new legions ever make their appearance, and to repose after a victory is equivalent to a defeat. In our temperate zone, where a higher cultivation of the ground tends to keep down the number of the lower animals, their persecutions, though frequently annoying, may still be borne with patience; but in many of the tropical regions, where man is either too indolent or not sufficiently numerous to set bounds to their increase, the insects constitute one of the great plagues of life. Along the low river-banks, near stagnant waters, and everywhere on hot and swampy grounds, the blood-thirsty Mosquitoes appear periodically in countless multitudes, the dread of all who are exposed to their attacks. [Illustration: MOSQUITO.] Not satisfied with piercing the flesh with their sharp proboscis, which at the same time forms a kind of syphon through which the blood flows, these malignant gnats, of which there are many species, inject a poison into the wound, which causes inflammation, and prolongs the pain.