The Harvest Bug.

"I very much wish," said my friend T. to me one day, "to buy a small estate in the vicinity of —— Forest. If there should be one to sell, pray let me know of it."

It was not long before an opportunity arose for my friend to satisfy his desire. But after I had made him acquainted with it, he declared himself no longer willing to purchase a property in a district where, as he had learned, one was devoured by red beasts all through the finest months of the year. What a frightful neighbourhood to live in, where you were forbidden to walk in your garden under pain of catching an itch in your legs!

Unquestionably, it is only too true that the cultivated ground, whether on the northern or the southern slope of the forest, is infested, from the beginning of summer to the beginning of winter, by Lilliputian horrors, like so many tiny red points, which cling obstinately to the skin, and there deposit, under the epidermis, their microscopic brood. Once planted there, the rougets, as the French call them, or harvest bugs, as we English call them, effect considerable mischief; and if, to relieve one's self, one indulges in "a scratch," the cutaneous surface is quickly covered by small blisters, which on a cursory examination might be taken for a skin affection not generally named in polite hearing.

But one does not perceive the galleries excavated by these annoying insects, positive tunnels or covered ways, through which they proceed to pour forth elsewhere the superfluity of their numerous progeny. Less prolific than the Acari, which create upon the skin immense patches of irritation, the harvest bugs confine themselves to a few circumscribed localities: their favourite choice being the legs, the arms, and the corners of the eyes, especially among young children. They are not above domestic animals; cats and dogs frequently suffer from them,—not, indeed, over the whole surface of the body, for they are not so wandering as the Acari,—but particularly inside the shell of the ear.

At the first glance you would scarcely believe that those red points, apparently immovable, could be living beings,—could be animals belonging to an order of some importance.

Let us attempt to isolate one of the animalcules with the point of a pin: it is not an easy thing to do, because they usually adhere to the epidermis in clusters of three or four individuals. There, now we have succeeded, and here is one before us: it is only the fifth of a millimètre in diameter, which is, for most people, the very last limit of the visual function (see the small white line in Fig. 76, a). And, in truth, it would be imperceptible to the eye but for its bright red colour. To study it carefully, of course, you must make use of a very strong lens, or, rather, of a microscope. (See Fig. 76, b.)