BY BHACY CLARK. 337 



with a free accusation of my " being in error;" which imputa- 

 tion precedes, instead of following, as it should properly do, 

 the cogent proofs of error which are adduced. However, 

 humanmn est errare ; and we are none of us exempt from the 

 humiliating imputation of " being in error," therefore it were 

 idle to be in a passion about it: having written much on this 

 subject, errors have undoubtedly crept in, although they do 

 not at present occur to the sagacity of my critics. The notions 

 now broached as new, existed inter Tulgos half a century ago, 

 and it was my business, and the especial object in my " Essay 

 on the Bots of Horses," to remove them. I thought I had 

 succeeded ; and all the naturalists of eminence during forty 

 years have coincided with me, as far as they have condescended 

 to acquaint me with their views on the subject. 



It seems, however, that we are to go back to the old ab- 

 surdity of the larvae of Gilstri, without teeth, or any instru- 

 ments of any kind whatever, gnawing through the horse's 

 stomach. And now, having performed this notable feat, what 

 have they accomplished? Why, gnawed away their own stand- 

 ing, to effect their own destruction ; for, falling, through the 

 bole they have made, into the cavity of the abdomen, they must 

 there inevitably perish. Now, suppose any one were to tell 

 you that a caterpillar, without teeth or jaws, gnawed from 

 under himself the leaf on which he stood, and very wisely 

 tumbled himself on the ground, and perished miserably ! 

 Nature, or, more properly speaking, an All-wise Providence, 

 does not commit such errors as these, but gives to all her 

 creatures their food in due season, and a safe standing while 

 they are eating it. Surely Linnaeus was right when he declared 

 he could find no distinctive characters between the genus Homo, 

 and the genus S'miia — " by their acts shall ye know them:" 

 whilst some are devotedly labouring to clear the stream of 

 knowledge from all its impurities, others, with quadrumanous 

 activity, busy themselves with scratching back those very impu- 

 rities again into the current. 



But 1 believe I can trace this nonsense to a preparation of 

 Mr. Coleman's, at that stupid Veterinary College, which pre- 

 paration I saw a few years after publishing my work. It 

 exhibits a mass of bots adhering to a piece of a horse's 

 stomach : some of the bots are deeply sunk into the substance, 

 some are only half immersed in it, and some are bodily and 



NO. IV. VOL. V. X X 



