ntic _Belostoma
Indicum_ cannot escape notice, attaining a size of nearly three inches.]

APHANIPTERA. _Fleas._--Fleas are equally numerous, and may be seen in
myriads in the dust of the streets or skipping in the sunbeams which
fall on the clay floors of the cottages. The dogs, to escape them,
select for their sleeping places spots where a wood fire has been
previously kindled; and here prone on the white ashes, their stomachs
close to the earth, and their hind legs extended behind, they repose in
comparative coolness, and bid defiance to their persecutors.

DIPTERA. _Mosquitoes._--But of all the insect pests that beset an
unseasoned European the most provoking by far are the truculent
mosquitoes.[1] Even in the midst of endurance from their onslaughts one
cannot but be amused by the ingenuity of their movements; as if aware of
the risk incident to an open assault, a favourite mode of attack is,
when concealed by a table, to assail the ankles through the meshes of
the blocking, or the knees which are ineffectually protected by a fold
of Russian duck. When you are reading, a mosquito will rarely settle on
that portion of your hand which is within range of your eyes, but
cunningly stealing by the underside of the book fastens on the wrist or
finger, and noiselessly inserts his proboscis there. I have tested the
classical expedient recorded by Herodotus, who states that the fishermen
inhabiting the fens of Egypt cover their beds with their nets, knowing
that the mosquitoes, although they bite through linen robes, will not
venture though a net.[2] But, notwithstanding the opinion of Spence,[3]
that nets with meshes an inch square will effectually exclude them, I
have been satisfied by painful experience that (if the theory is not
altogether fallacious) at least the modern mosquitoes of Ceylon are
uninfluenced by the same considerations which restrained those of the
Nile under the successors of Cambyses.

[Footnote 1: _Culex laniger_? Wied. In Kandy Mr. Thwaites finds _C.
fuscanus, C. circumvolens_, &c., and one with a most formidable hooked
proboscis, to which he has assigned the appropriate name _C. Regius_.]

[Footnote 2: HERODOTUS, _Euterpe_, xcv.]

[Footnote 3: KIRBY and SPENCE'S _Entomology_, letter iv.]

_List of Ceylon Insects._

For the following list of the insects of the island, and the remarks
prefixed to it, I am indebted to Mr. F. Walker, by whom it has been
prepared after a careful inspection of the