A TERROR OF THE TROPIC'S

Hokitika Guardian, 9 July 1924, Page 1

A TERROR OF THE TROPIC'S

SOLOMON ISLANDS. Mav ti

Physical pain exists in many degrees and forms, hut for the utmost limit of torture I think the bite of a Solomon Island centipede will defy comparison. Sinuous, horrible, scaly billies from ti to It) inches in length, undulating on scores of nasty scrambling legs, they are the hist word in repulsive hideousness, says \V. Collinsott in the "Daily Mail.” Last night I was awakened by the most terrible screams from across the l harbour—continuous, urgent, and shrill, conveying a sense of horror and terror impossible to descibe. More horrible -till was the hoarse and crazy jabbering that tilled the short intervals. For more than half an hour this continued. the screams becoming hoarser but no less insistent, until at last the poor viitini relapsed into un-musi-iou-ne-s. Hu inquiry this morning a native told me that “Centipede lit* kai-kai foot belong one Idler mary • woman)." A white man bitten hy one of these loathsome things, and rendered crazy with pain, has been known to plunge hi- bitten hand into boiling water as a counter-irritant —the attempted cure being more disastrous in it- effects than the original injury. The rough and ready antidote used here, when the materials are handy, is firstly a tourniquet above the wound then two right-angle cuts with a knife, followed hy the application of strong ammonia solution. Fowls around the house tend to keep the place free of this pestilential insect, though how they escape lieing bitten themselves i- a problem, as it sometimes takes a hen half an hour of battering to kill one.