Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1881 — Creeping Things. [ARTICLE]

Creeping Things.

The sight of certain creatures is enough to give us a “crawling” sensation. Bare memory of them must be enough to any person who has traveled in Australia. Jesse Young, the explorer, talks very coolly, however, about the bug and snake creation in that queer clime. He says: The reptiles are really beautiful; crocodiles in the North, and snakes, lizards, scorpions, and centipedes in the South. I shall not readily forget the sensation I experienced when one nigbt a huge black centipede, eight inches long, crawled upon my neck with his horrible sixty-four legs, and made his way to my feet lesiurely, much to my disgust, and though he was probably only a few seconds, I thought him slow. He is in the museum at Adelaide, with all the whisky he can drink. Insects are wonderfully prolific—mosquitoes and flies being particularly abundant The native children are sometimes hardly recognizable, so completely are they covered with flies, filling their eyes, noses and mouth. "When eating, it requires dexterous manoeuvring to get a piece of meat into one’s mouth without its complement of flies. Spiders are very common, as also are the tarantula being the most formidable of the former, and the bull-dog ant the worst species Of the latter. These auts are an inch or more in height, and about two inches long. They all fight fiercely, and their sting is not at all to be desired. They catch hold of your skin with their nippers, bend the body under like a scorpion, and put the sting gently in, leaving the venom, and sometimes the sting itself. When camping near a nest of them, we generally thrust a tire-stick in the hole, which lias the effect of keeping them at home.