INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 159 



nuses on the mucilage tliere produced. When full- 

 grown, they fall through the nostrils to the ground and 

 assume the pupa. Whether the animal suffers much 

 pain from these troublesome assailants is not ascertain- 

 ed. Sometimes the maggots make their way even into 

 the brain. I have been informed by a very accurate 

 and intelligent friend, that, on opening the head of one 

 of his sheep which died in consequence of a vertigo^ 

 three maggots were found in it in a line just above the 

 eyes, and that behind them there was a bladder of wa- 

 ter. — Perhaps you are not aware that the bots we are 

 speaking of, or rather those in the head of goats, have 

 been prescribed as a remedy for the epilepsy, and that 

 from the tripod of Delphos. Yet so we are told on the 

 authority of Alexander Trallien. Whether Democrates, 

 who consulted the oracle, was cured by this remedy 

 does not appear ; the story shows however that the an- 

 cients were aware of the station of these larvae. — The 

 common saying that a whimsical person is iJiaggottj/, or 

 has got maggots in his head, perhaps arose from the 

 freaks the sheep have been observed to exhibit when 

 infested by their bots. — The flesh-fly is also a great an- 

 noyance to the fleecy tribe, especially in fenny coun- 

 tries ; and if constant attention be not paid them, 

 they are soon devoured by its insatiable larvae. In Lin- 

 colnshire, the principal profit of the druggists is de- 

 rived from the sale of a mercurial ointment used to de- 

 stroy them. — In tropical countries the sheep frequently 

 suffer from the ants. Bosman relates that when in 

 Guinea, if one of his was attacked by them in the night, 

 which often happened, it was invariably destroyed, and 

 was so expeditiously devoured that in the morning only 

 the skeleton would be left. 



