Page:Life in India or Madras, the Neilgherries, and Calcutta.djvu/149

Rh clothes, and compel you constantly to look over your drawers and trunks. The ants, mosquitos, and other insects are thinned off by active little lizards, that live about the furniture and pursue their prey on the walls and ceilings. Sometimes, when unwarily darting upon a mosquito or ily, the lizard will come dropping upon your table or yourself–more to his fright, however, than to yours, for they are harmless creatures and the allies of man, as they attack his enemies of the insect tribe. Lizards of a larger kind inhabit the gardens, and a still larger species is by some classes eaten, and accounted a delicacy.

The scorpion is a small creature, from three to five inches in length. In appearance it much resembles a little lobster. The smaller species is of a brownish-white colour, and is more venomous than the large black scorpion, though less repugnant to the eye. They are found under the corners of mats, in storehouses, on shelves, and in other unswept places. When disturbed, they run over the floor with their jointed tails arched over their backs, and ready to strike with the hooked sting in which it ends. The sting is severe, but scarcely dangerous.

A more pleasing class of visitors are the little