on the CEstri and Cuterebrse of various Animals. 87 



by Linnaeus, supposing it to be a bot of the nose. How Dr. Leach could alto- 

 gether pass over my (E. veterinus in his enumeration is quite inexplicable, 

 figures of it appearing in the Linnean Transactions, admirably done by Syden- 

 ham Edwards, and again repeated in my dissertation. 



Fabricius, than whom no one hardly has described insects better, in his last 

 work has honoured my labours with his notice, adopting my suggestions in 

 most particulars, but seems to have had some lurking hesitation about the 

 propriety of my genus Cuterehra, whose characters in contrast to the CEstri 

 are of the most marked kind, differing from them in several highly essential 

 particulars, in which Latreille and all later naturalists, with whose opinions I 

 have become acquainted, have most readily acquiesced. 



I may here transiently notice, that some time since a communication ap- 

 peared in the Linnean Society's Transactions, vol. xiv. p. 353, from the pen of 

 my friend Mr. W. Sharp MacLeay, endeavouring to prove that the Linnean 

 genus (Estrus did not represent the Oistros of the Greek writers. This idea 

 he derived from France, the same opinion or suggestion being found in Olivier 

 (see Encyclopedic M^thodique, Hist. Nat. viii. p. 453), and afterwards in La- 

 treille and others, supposing that a Tabanus was more likely to have been the 

 object noticed by the ancients. This, however, I disproved clearly, establish- 

 ing my deductions from the terror of the animals under the attack of this fly, 

 which had been so well described by their poets that it at once fixed the ob- 

 ject; since no other of the fly kind save the little gnat accompanies his attack 

 with any sound, (and that this gnat was not the object of their descriptions was 

 very clear,) and the Tabani are all silent in their blood-sucking attacks. Other 

 reasons were also there advanced, and were deemed by all unprejudiced readers 

 suflUcient to disprove any such idea ; had however the contrary happened, and 

 a change had taken place, it would have been accompanied with the most 

 lamentable confusion in these pursuits. See Linn. Trans, vol. xv. p. 406 for 

 my )-eply. 



I am reluctantly compelled to expunge yet one more supposed species of this 

 genus, which is evidently the result of careless compilation on the part of the 

 German naturalists. De Villars of Lyons, in his useful and candid work, the 

 ' Entomologia,' has presented us with an QSstrus which he calls by the specific 

 name of lineatus ; this is copied into the works of Meigen, Megerle and others 

 as a new and true species. Conversant and familiar with the appearances of 



