ON BEING BITTEN.

Northern Advocate, 12 November 1923, Page 7

ON BEING BITTEN.

PERMISSIBLE BITES—AND OTHERS. . One result of it, according to the proverb, is that you become twice shy, but what the proverb auite completely fails to reckon with is the fact that it takes two to make a bite (wrote G. P. in an English paper). Besides, it is exceedingly doubtful whether ghats and such like pay very much attention t<? proverbs. In any event, it is not much use for the bitten to become twice—or two hundred times —shy if the biter simultantously becomes twice or two hundred times as eager and voracious. In human encounters shyness is very often a catching complaint; an obvious diffidence displayed by one party provokes a sympathetic confusion in the other. This is not so as between the biters and the bitten. You may cast your eyes to the ground, stammer, and blush as pink, as you know how when brought into the presense of a gnat or mosquito, but you will not infect him with your bashfulness. The pinker you become the more appetising he probably finds you.

This, however, is uncertain, for, capricious as the biters are in their attacks, the principles on which they select their victims are unknown. Why is it that one person can walk through j a positive Milky Way of gnats and i emerge without even the makings o" a single spot? Why is it that another person becomes the immediate goal of every gnat in the neighbourhood? It i« said the women are the most frequently attacked, and cn the strength of this apparent preference some have asserted that the coarser sex has made its flesh rank and unattractive by addiction to alcohol and tobacco. Personally I do not believe it; it sounds a little too much like the "frogs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails" theory, which has plunged many a nursery into bitter and unnecessary strife. Moreover, if it were true somebody would be certain to discover that here Was an easy Avay out of the great gnat nuisance—we should only have to kill all women (or, alternatively, teach them all how to drink and smoke) and all the various kmds of biters in the world would shortly be starved out of existence There would be much to deplore about either of these solutions—particularly as I am convinccd that the biters would still go on biting according to their ancient and obscure preferences. No, if we are to stop the biting the first thing to do is to discover definitely what starts it. I wish the British Association or some body of that kind would set to work on this important problem instead of discussin such venerable but remote topics as the determination of sex. If some of our biologists would only determine what constitutes biteability we might get a move on. We might boil down a few individuals of proved immunity and inoculate everybody else with the result. j And while they were at it our professors might also consider why it is that bites vary so gravely in their social consequences. Just as some people have the misfortune to attract to themselves, and are freely bitten by, gnats, so others (or, more probably, the same unfortunate people) have a knack of attracting and being bitten by * * * s. But note the difference. Though I have been once bitten, I am not in the least shy about admitting that it was a gnat which probed me; I might even put it in capitals without loss of caste, and announce to the world, "I have been bitten by a GNAT so large that it might easily have been mistaken for a young partridge." On the other hand, as a person of polite aspirations, I cannot bring myself to spell the name of my other assailant even in the smallest type which the printer could supply. Yet I am no more responsible for it 1 ; presence than I am for the existence of the gnac; it probably leapt upon me from afar as an ideal object for assault. "A hole," said Sheridan, "is the accident of a day, and may be pardoned upon any gentleman; but a darn is premeditated poverty." In strict theory an isolated * * * is also the accident of a day, and should be pardoned upon any gentleman. But it is not. One could draw up quite a long lisi of bites which are pardonable, and, indeed, occasion for sympathy. A man (wtoieh, of course, includes woman) may with perfect propriety be bitten by A gnat, A mosquito, A wasp, A hornet, and many other tilings from a rattlesnake to a mad dog. On the other hand, he shall not, under peril of ostracism, be bitten by a * * * *. Still less shall he be bitten by a *"* *. And it is utterly unthinkable that he should be bitten by a * * * * —unless, of course, we happen to be lighting another war for civilisation. It all seems to me a little arbitrary. Is there, I wonder, somewhere in existence a British Board of Bite Censors who arc prepared instantly to pronounce on any hitherto unclassified ease and assign it at once to the mentionables or unmentionables? I notice • that in general it is more respectable to be stung than to be nitten; should I be all right, I wonder, if I said, "I have been somewhat fiercely stung by a pulex irritans" instead of just "bitten by a ****>>? what would happen if I w"ere stung, probed, or bitten by some entirely new type of

assailant? Suppose I came in from the garden and announced, "I have just been most demnably mauled by oy.e of those large woolly caterpillars" —'should I be an object for commiseration or contempt? Or suppose, on opening a wardrobe door, I w*as promptly set upon by a savage moth. Where would that one go according to the current standards of propriety? I do not know; and, on the whole, it seems better that these speculations should now cease. I began with gnats, and if I had stuck to gnats I should have been on safer ground. There are a great many of them, and they bite, or refrain from biting, at their own sweet mil and mysterious preferences. But they have one certain recommendation; they are numbered among nature's gentlemen, and their operations, though painful, are unimpeachablv correct.