’S ceum an cirinnaich fo choïs.
A mhuc a mharbh mi ’n uiridh
Bha uirceanan aice am bliadhna.
CHAPTER XXX.
Midges and other Bloodsuckers—The Tsetse of South Africa—The Abyssinia Zimb—Livingstone—Adders and Grass Snakes—Lucan’s Pharsalia—Celsus—Legend of St. John ante Portam Latinam.
Along the west coast the weather is now [May 1872] as mild and May-like as you could wish; the swallow twitters gaily in the sunlight, and when he ceases his zig-zag flight for a moment to rest on chimney-top or house-ridge, he sings a gladsome song, low and faint indeed, and frequently lost on that account in the general chorus, but exceedingly sweet and musical, as you will find if you give it the attention it merits; while in the distance you hear the cheery notes of the cuckoo, wild and startling as yet, as they burst suddenly upon the ear from out the woodland glade or from the old rowan tree that finds root room, you wonder how, in yonder crevice in the rock above the foaming waterfall, but soon to become familiar as the season advances, and pressed upon your notice whether you will or no, and at all sorts of impossible times and places, by the truant schoolboy’s oft-repeated, though rarely successful, attempts at imitation. For the first week in May the temperature is unusually high, and we do not recollect ever before having seen insect life so plentiful so early in the season. Midges, gadflies, and other bloodsuckers are already astir in their thousands, their taste for their favourite fluid keen and unabated, as they fail not abundantly to manifest by an activity that one cannot help admiring, even while wishing that it could possibly be directed to a more legitimate and less personally annoying end. But “’tis their nature to,” as the hymn-book says, and we must grin and bear it, protecting ourselves from their assaults as best we may, thankful the while that the evil is no worse. Our winged pests are innocence itself compared with their congeners in other lands. Our midge, for instance, is to the mosquito as the dog-fish is to the shark, as the domestic cat is to the tiger; while our gadflies and Æstri, though sufficiently annoying to our cattle at certain seasons, are to be regarded as absolutely harmless if we compare them with the venomous Zimb of Abyssinia, or the still deadlier Tsetse of Southern Africa. The Abyssinian insect, by the way—the Zimb—is probably the Zebub of the Hebrew Scriptures, the estimation in which it was held from the earliest ages being clearly enough indicated by its place in the word Beelzebub, “the prince of devils.” Livingstone’s account of the Tsetse is one of the most interesting chapters in his Travels. Shall the intrepid explorer be restored to us? We are afraid not. It is only too probable that, as Scott said of his protegé and friend, the author of the Scenes of Infancy—
“A distant and a deadly shore
Has Leyden’s cold remains!”