312 Mr. Clark' j Obfervations on the Genus Oejlms, 



nymousterm among the ancients for the bots: that term has always 

 been applied to the thin fmooth worms of the inteftines, but, I 

 apprehend, never to thefe. 



i Our anceftors imagined that poverty, or improper food, engen- 

 dered thefe animals, or that they were the offspring of putrefac- 

 tion. In Shakfpeare's Henry the Fourth, Part I, the oftler at 

 Rochefter fays : " Peafe and beans are as dank here as a dog, and 

 " that is the next way to give poor jades the bots ;" and one of 

 the misfortunes of the miferable nag of Petruchio is, that " he is 

 " fo begnawn with the bots." 



When the animal is kept from food the bots are alfo, and are 

 then, without doubt, the mod troublefome; whence it was 

 very naturally fuppofed that poverty or bad food was the parent of 

 them. 



They alfo appear to have gone formerly in this country by the 

 name of truncheons. In Blundeville, who wrote on farriery dur- 

 ing the reign of Queen Elizabeth, we have the following pafTage : — 

 " The fecond fort of worms have great heads and fmall long tails, 

 ■** like a needle, and be called bots: the third be lhort and thick, 

 " like the end of a man's little finger, and be called truncheons." 



Of the Oestrus veterinus . 



This fpecies feems to have been only well defcribed by Linnaeus, 

 who called it ?tafalis> from an idea of its entering the noftrils of the 

 horfe to depofit the eggs*, which it could not well do without de- 

 ftroying the wings, and is therefore probably as much a fable as the 

 " mire per anum intrans" of the CE. haemorrhoidaiis, I have feen four 



* Habitat in equorum fauce per nares intrans. Linn, S^/J, Nat. 2- p- 969. 



chryfalides 



