ANIMAL-GALLS. 405 



ineffectual to drive them, and have to use a goad, in 

 form of an iron needle, at the end of a stick. Were 

 the pain inflicted by the fly very acute, it would find 

 it next to impossible to lay thirty or forty eggs without 

 being killed by the strokes of the ox's tail; for though 

 Vallisnieri supposes that the fly is shrewd enough 

 to choose such places as the tail cannot reach, Reau- 

 mur saw a cow repeatedly flap its tail upon a part 

 full of the gall-bumps; and in another instance he 

 saw a heifer beat away a party of common flies from 

 a part where there were seven or eight gall-bumps. 

 He concludes^ therefore, with much plausibility, that 

 these two beasts would have treated the ox-flies in 

 the same way, if they had given them pain when de- 

 positing their eggs. 



The extraordinary effects produced upon cattle, on 

 the appearance of one of these flies, would certainly 

 lead us to conclude, that the pain inflicted is excru- 

 ciating. Most of our readers may recollect to have 

 seen, in the summer months, a whole herd of cattle 

 start off across a field in full gallop, as if they were 

 racing, — their movements indescribably awkward — 

 their tails being poked out behind them as straight 

 and stiff as a post, and their necks stretched to their 

 utmost length. All this consternation has been 

 known, from the earliest times to be produced by the 

 fly we are describing. Virgil gives a correct and 

 lively picture of it in his Georgics,* of which the fol- 

 lowing is a translation, a little varied from Trapp: — 



Round mount Alburnus, green with shady oaks. 

 And in the groves of Silarus, there flies 



* Est lucos Silari circa illicibusque virentem 

 Plurimus Alburnum volitans, cui nomen asilo 

 Romanum est, CEstrum Graii vertere vocantes, 

 Asper, acerba, sonans; quo tola exterrita sylvis 

 DifFugiunt armenta; furit mugitibus eether 

 Concussus, sjlvgeque et sicci ripi Tanagri. 



Georg. lib. III. I. 146. 



