Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/196

 sand flies and mosquitoes, cockroaches and centipedes, scorpions, lizards, and snakes. Their noise during an evening in the rains is certainly tremendous; indeed,quite deafening; but few of these are allowed to intrude upon the interior, being prevented by the chicks, a sort of curtain made of very finely split slips of bamboo, the thickness of a crow-quill, neatly tied together, and suspended in the door-way. If these be tied up after dark, when dinner is on the table, an entomologist might make a magnificent collection without rising from his chair.

The mosquito is the most annoying. In Calcutta they swarm all the year round; but in the upper provinces they disappear during the cold weather. They insinuate their proboscis through one or two folds of cloth, even through a woollen sock; their sting is as pungent as a nettle's, and is immediately followed by a lump as large as a coffee bean,and intolerably itchy. Strangers are liable to scratch this, and often cause very serious sores. Mosquitoes are fond of novelty, and new comers may be recognised by the attentions paid them by the mosquito. The mosquito curtain, or the horse-hair chowrie, are therefore the only alternative. The mosquito is generated in stagnant water; his first appearance is in form of a maggot, zig-zagging about, and when he gets his wings he deserts his native element, and soars