g species, being nine-twentieths of an inch in
length. Its habits are not known. We also figure the Locust and Hickory
borer (Fig. 108; _a_, larva; _b_, pupa), which has swept off the locust
tree from New England. The beautiful yellow banded beetles are very
abundant on the flowers of the golden rod in September.

[Illustration: 108. Locust Borer.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: The External and Internal Parasites of Man and Domestic
Animals. By Prof. A. E. Verrill, 1870. We are indebted to the author for
the use of this and the figures of the Bot fly of the horse, the turkey,
duck and hog louse, the Cattle tick, the itch insect and mange insect of
the horse.]

CHAPTER IX.

CERTAIN PARASITIC INSECTS.

The subject of our discourse is not only a disagreeable but too often a
painful one. Not only is the mere mention of the creature's name of
which we are to speak tabooed and avoided by the refined and polite, but
the creature itself has become extinct and banished from the society of
the good and respectable. Indeed under such happy auspices do a large
proportion of the civilized world now live that their knowledge of the
habits and form of a louse may be represented by a blank. Not so with
some of their great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers, if history,
sacred and profane, poetry,[5] and the annals of literature testify
aright; for it is comparatively a recent fact in history that the louse
has awakened to find himself an outcast and an alien. Among savage
nations of all climes, some of which have been dignified with the apt,
though high sounding name of Phthiriophagi, and among the Chinese and
other semi-civilized peoples, these lords of the soil still flourish
with a luxuriance and rankness of growth that never diminishes, so that
we may say without exaggeration that certain mental traits and fleshly
appetites induced by their consumption as an article of food may have
been created, while a separate niche in our anthropological museums is
reserved for the instruments of warfare, both offensive and defensive,
used by their phthiriophagous hunters. Then have we not in the very
centres of civilization the poor and degraded, which are most faithfully
attended lay these revolting satellites!

But bantering aside, there is no more engaging subject to the naturalist
than that of animal parasites. Consider the great proportion of animals
that gain their livelihood by stealing that of others. While a large
propor