144 HORSE AND CATTLE FLIES. 
I certainly think that, if lineata was here to any observable extent, 
we could not fail to have had notice of the eggs. These being placed 
in rows on the hair near the heels would, or at least I believe they 
would, attract attention fully as much as those of the Horse Bot Fly. 
But I will now take the opportunity of asking British observers who may 
read these notes to be so obliging, in case they find specimens, as to 
favour me with a few. 
But the chief point of enquiry was with regard to similarity in 
characteristics of attack between the two species, and here it seems to 
me there is marked difference. The lineata flies (p. 807 of paper cited) 
are said to occur at time of egg-laying in ‘‘extraordinary numbers.” 
With our bovis the difficulty is to see them at all, that is, on reliable 
authority,—there is plenty of information of fly-attack, which, on being 
run up, is usually of a Gad Fly, most commonly Tabanus bovinus, Linn. 
With us the main time for laying is the middle of summer, or, taking 
the edges of the average, from June to September; in the notes 
quoted, the /ineata is seen in January, about a hundred observed in 
February, and on March 1st the fly is out in numbers, and in full tide 
of oviposition. ‘This is an important difference, for the length of time 
taken for a lineata maggot to progress from gullet to hide (in paper 
quoted) is ‘‘eight or nine months” (p. 316). In my examinations of 
bovis I found the young maggot, just large enough to perceive with the 
unassisted eye * when removed from the little bloody spot in which 
they lay beneath the hide, on the 12th of November, which, taking the 
1st of August as the middle average date, gives a much shorter time 
(that is, rather less than half the time) in the case of our maggot to 
that named as the time taken in the case of the American maggot for 
progress from egg to existence at the base of the hide. 
The little maggots were prickly, and lay full of blood in the slight 
swelling of the subcutaneous pellicle of the hide caused by their 
presence, to which attention was drawn by its livid colour and the 
surrounding inflammation. 
I devoted great care to making vertical sections of the hide, and 
found the channels, or rather passages, as fine as a hair from the sore 
to the surface, not to be smooth at the side, as if caused by pressure (as 
I noticed at the time), but torn as if by gnawing. I did not find any 
half-completed passages from below upwards; but I did find one half- 
completed from above downwards, at the bottom of which lay a minute 
body, which was so much crushed by the scalpel that I could not 
speak with certainty of its nature, but from similarity of the passage 
with the others I believe it to have been a young maggot piercing its 
way downwards with its mouth-forks. 
* T did not take the measure in millimétres, or part thereof, my work being 
needed for agricultural service, for which the minute measurement was uncalled, 
