500 INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. 



More than twenty different kinds of bot-flies are already 

 known, and several of them are found in this country. Some 

 of them have been brought here with our domesticated animals 

 from abroad, and have here multiplied and increased. Three 

 of them attack the horse. The large bot-fly of the horse ( Gas- 

 terophilus eqid) has spotted wings. She lays her eggs about 

 his knees; the small red-tailed species {G. hwmorrhoidalis)^ on 

 his lips; and the brown farrier bot-fly [G. veterinns) under his 

 throat, according to Dr. Roland Green. By rubbing and biting 

 the parts where the eggs are laid, the horse gets the maggots 

 into his mouth, and swallows them with his food. The insects 

 then fasten themselves, in clusters, to the inside of his stomach, 

 and live there till they are fully grown. The foflowing are 

 stated to be the symptoms shown by the horse when he is 

 much infested by these insects. He loses flesh, coughs, eats 

 sparingly, and bites his sides; at length he has a discharge 

 from his nose, and these symptoms are followed by a stiffness 

 of his legs and neck, staggering, difficulty in breathing, con- 

 vulsions, and death. No sure and safe remedy has yet been 

 found sufficient to remove bots from the stomach of the horse. 

 The only treatment to be recommended, is copious bleeding, 

 and a free use of mild oils, in the early stages of the attack. 

 The preventive means are very simple, consisting only in 

 scraping oft' the eggs or nits of the fly every day.* Bracy 

 Clark, Esq., who has published some very interesting remarks f 

 on the bots of horses and of other animals, maintains that bots 

 are rather beneficial than injurious to the animals they infest. 

 His principal work on this subject I have not yet seen. The 

 maggots of the QLstrus bovis, or ox bot-fly, live in large open 

 boils, sometimes called wornils or wurmals, that is, worm-holes, 

 on the backs of cattle. The fly is rather smaller than the horse 



* See Dr. Green's "Natural History of the Horse-Bee," in Adams's " Medi- 

 cal and Agricultural Register," Vol. I., p. 53 ; and the same in " The New Eng- 

 land Farmer," Vol. IV., p. 345. 



t "Observations on the genus CEstrus," in the " Transactions -of the Linnaean 

 Society," Vol. III., p. 289, with figures ; " On the insect called Oistros by the 

 Ancients," in Vol. XV. of the same work ; and " An Essay on the Rots of Horses 

 and other Animals." 1 vol. 4to. Lond. 1815. 



