ANIMAL GALLS. 



351 



acts, though he is disposed to consider it fit for boring 

 through the hides of cattle. " Whenever I have succeeded," 

 he adds, "in seeing these insects at work, they have 

 usually shown that they proceeded quite differently from 



Ovipositor ot the Breeze -fly, greatly magnified, witli a claw and part of the tube, 

 distinct. 



what I had imagined ; but unfortunately I have never been 

 able to see one of them pierce the hide of a cow under my 

 eyes."* 



Mr. Bracey Clark, taking another view of the matter, is 

 decidedly of opinion that the fly does not pierce the skin 

 of cattle with its ovipositor at all, but merely glues its eggs 

 to the hairs, while the grubs, when hatched, eat their wa}^ 

 under the skin. If this be the fact, as is not improbable, 

 the three curved pieces of the ovipositor, instead of acting, 

 as Reaumur imagined, like a centre-bit, will only serve to 

 prevent the eggs from falling till they are firmly glued 

 to the hair, the opening formed by the two shorter points 

 peimitting this to be eifected. This account of the matter 

 is rendered more plausible, from Reaumur's statement that 



* Mem. iv. 538 



