DIPTERA. 419 



smaller hooks or prickles. When they are fully grown, they drop 

 to the ground and burrow in it a short distance. After this, the 

 skin of the maggot becomes a hard and brownish shell, within 

 which the insect turns to a pupa, and finally to a fly, and comes 

 out by pushing off a little piece like a lid from the small end of 

 the shell. 



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 (^G aster ophilus equi) 

 has spotted wings. She lays her eggs about his knees; the small 

 red-tailed species {G. hcemorrhoidalis)^ on his lips ; and the 

 brown farrier bot-fly [G. veterinus) under his throat, according to 

 Dr. Roland Green. By rubbing and biting the parts where the 

 eggs are laid, the l^orse gets the maggots into his mouth, and 

 swallows them with his food. The insects then fasten them- 

 selves, in clusters, to the inside of his stomach, and live there 

 till they are fully grown. The following 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 symp- 



erms; 



■si 



toms are followed by a stiffness of his legs and neck, stags 

 difficulty in breathing, convulsions, and death. No sure and safe 

 remedy has yet been found sufficient to remove hots 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 mean^ are very simple, consisting 

 only in scraping off" 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 



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

 and Agricultural Register," Vol. 1., p. 53; and the same in " The New England 

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



t " Observations on the Genus Oestrus," in the " Transactions of the Linnean 

 Society," Vol. IH., p. 280, with figures; "On the insect called Oistros by the 

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

 and other Animals." 1 vol. 4to, Lend. 1815. 



