DIPTERA OF MINNESOTA. 



13J) 



Mr. Logan reported to the editor of tnscct Life, some years ago, 

 that while in the forests of the United States of Colombia looking 

 for mahogany, far from cattle or the habitations of men, he was 

 much troubled by bots living under the skin of his back and should- 

 ers. 



Mr. John Hamilton, in the Entomological News Vol. 4, claims that 

 in South America the bot fly, which he at the time recorded as Oestrus 

 Jiominis, deposited eggs under the skin of the bellies of the natives, 

 and the larvse sometimes produced in them fatal ulcers. This may 

 have been Hypoderma bozis, or more probably Dermatobia noxialis. 

 There are man}'^ examples of the occurrence 

 of this latter species in man. The same phy- 

 sician also reports a case which came under 

 his attention of a six-year-old boy who had 

 been on a farm in Illinois the fall before his 

 attack. He says: "Several years ago I saw, 

 professionally, a boy, six years of age, who 

 had been suffering for some months from the 

 glands of one side of his neck being swollen, 

 and a fetid ulceration around the back teeth 

 of the lower jaw of the same side. Three 

 months' treatment was of no avail, and the 

 end seemed near. One day a white object 

 was seen to move in the ulcer at the root of 

 the tongue, which, on being carefully ex- 

 tracted, proved to be a large grub, which, from having frequently 

 seen them, I recognized as a full grown larva of Hypoderma. It 

 was of the usual tawny color, about half an inch long when extract- 

 ed, and about one-third that thickness, and quite lively. The case 

 ended fatally." 



The supposition was that, in some way, when on the farm, an 

 egg was taken to the boy's mouth, and the larva found between the 

 base of the tongue and jaw suitable tissue in which to develop, com- 

 ing to maturity at the same time as though it had gone into an ox. 



The writer wishes in this connection to refer to a case which 

 came under his own notice in 1903. Dr. Foster of St. Paul sent to 

 the entomologist two or three dead larvse, looking like the illustra- 

 tion shown in Fig. 133. These were taken from a female infant 



Fig. 132. Bot of Man, 

 Dermatobia noxialis. 

 After Brauer. 



