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page 258 ---pests---
Garden herbs, Spanish potatoes, and melons, produce through the whole
year, but most abundantly, however, during the wet season. The pisang, guava, oranges, etc. blossom in the rainy season from October to March,
and produce fruit in the dry season.
In this climate, as in all others, unfavorable influences are not wanting
which are hurtful to the plants. The finest orange groves frequently fall
a prey to the brown ants which gnaw off the bark, or to the mole-crickets
which devour the roots.
Sugar plantation
The young mandiocca and sugar plantations are often invaded, stripped of their leaves, and
laid waste, by similar enemies in incredible  numbers, or deprived of their
roots by wasps which live underground. But even when the crop has happily
reached maturity, the owner must share it with many foreign guests. Swarms
of monkeys, flocks of parrots and other birds, attack the plantations;
the paca, agouti, and other kinds of wild pigs, eat up the leaves, stalks
and fruit, and myriads of tenthredoes injure the crop.
The planter himself, particularly if he has
just arrived from Europe,
and is unaccustomed to this climate, has many hard trials to undergo from
tormenting animals. If he does not keep his dwelling closed, particularly
in the morning, evening and night, there are swarms of large and small
mosquitoes which torment him with their stings, even through the thickest
clothes, and only gauze and silk can secure him against these enemies.
page 259
The earth-flies (Pulex penetrans),
which are concealed in numbers in  the sand, penetrate under the nails
of the hands and feet, and, by producing a blister filled with little
eggs, cause the most painful sensations, which, if the sympathetic swelling
of the inguinal glands is neglected, are often followed by mortification.
The blister, as soon as it gives pain, must be carefully removed, and
snuff rubbed into the wound. Besides these, the inhabitant has other enemies
in his house; the white-bellied ant (Cupim or termes
fatale), a great number of blattae (blatta  orientalis), and other vermin, continually oblige him, by their
destructive fury, to make new arrangements. They
first cause the most terrible devastation wherever they pass in their
course; for metals excepted, they gnaw through everything, and in a few
days the beams of the house are rotten, the linen, books, and all the
household furniture, are destroyed. The blatta commits great destruction
among the vegetables in particular, and in the night, even attacks the
tips of the fingers. The injury which these animals cause to the naturalist
is extremely distressing; he frequently finds his collections, which he
thought quite secure, by being carefully shut up and hung against the
wall, destroyed in a single night. Taught by repeated experience, we found
the only safe means to be the applicatiion of Buffon's arsenic salve,
wrapping the parcels in linens dipped in oil of turpentine, and depositing
them in tin cases, which were soldered before they were sent away.
 
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