146 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED EY INSECTS. 



stands continually stamping from the pain produced by 

 the insertion of the weapons sheathed in the proboscis of 

 a little fly {Stomoxijs cnlcitrans) before noticed as attack- 

 ing ourselves^. This alights upon him sometimes in one 

 place and sometimes in another, and never lets him rest 

 while the day lasts. — See him again when in harness and 

 travelling. He is bathed in blood flowing from innu- 

 merable wounds made by the knives and lancets of 

 various horse-flies {Tahanus^ L.), which assail him as he 

 goes, and allow him no respite^; and consider that even 

 this is nothing to what he suffers in other climates from 

 the same pest. In North America, vast clouds of dif- 

 ferent species — so abundant as to obscure every distant 

 object, and so severe in their bite as to merit the appel- 

 lation of burning flies — cover and torment the horses to 

 such a degree as to excite compassion even in the hearts 

 of the pack-horsemen. Some of them are nearly as big 

 as humble-bees ; and, when they pierce the skin and 

 veins of the unhappy beast, make so large an orifice that, 

 besides what they suck, the blood flows down its neck, 

 sides, and shoulders in large drops like tears, till, to use 

 Bartram's expression, " they are all in a gore of blood." 

 Both the doff-tick and the American tick before men- 

 tioned, especially the latter, also infest the horse. Kalm 

 affirms, that he has seen the under parts of the belly, 

 and other places of the body, so covered by them, that 

 he could not introduce the point of a knife between 

 them. They were deeply buried in the flesh ; and in 

 one instance that he witnessed, the miserable creature 



» See above, p. 110. •> Once travelling through Cambridge- 



shire with a brother entomologist in a gig, our horse was in the con- 

 dition here described, from the attack of Tabamis rustints. 



