540 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS. 
The camel, and also the elephant and rhinoceros, as Bruce sup- 
poses, are subject to this enemy. “ When the first of these animals is 
attacked, its body, head, and legs break out into large bosses, which 
swell, break, and putrify, to its certain destruction. ‘The British As- 
sociation, at the meeting held at Cambridge, selected this insect as 
a fit subject to be proposed for further research. According to 
Desfontaines, the Tabanus Maroccanus Fab. torments the camels in 
the North of Africa, the bodies of which are sometimes literally 
covered with these insects, so that there is reason to believe that the 
zimb is the latter insect, or one nearly allied, belonging to the same 
genus, although there seem nearly equally strong reasons for believ- 
ing it to belong to the family C&stride. (See Marquis Spineto on the 
Zimb, in Taylor’s Phil. Mag. March 1834.) 
Olivier, Latreille, and MacLeay, are of opinion that the oterpoc 
of the Greeks, and Asilus of the Romans, was a species of Tabanide, 
the latter author especially, from the description given of the insect 
by the ancients, endeavouring to prove at great length that it was a 
species of Chrysops. Mr. Bracy Clark, on the other hand, has with 
equal skill maintained the opinion that as no other insect than 
CEstrus Bovis is capable of producing such effects as are so admirably 
described by Virgil, the otovpoc must have been that insect.* 
It appears, however, to me, that in this controversy too little poetic 
licence has been allowed to the old poets. Who is not aware of the 
difficulty of determining the species of insects popularly noticed even 
by the old poets of our own country? I can easily believe that these 
writers, perceiving, as they could not fail to do, that the blood-sucking 
Tabani are unceasing in their attacks upon horned cattle, would, 
without question, at once couple them with the effects produced by 
the Cistri upon the same animals.t Hence, unlike the umpire in 
“The Chameleon” who addressed the disputants — 
“¢ Sirs, cease your pother, 
*¢ The creature ’s neither one nor t’other ; 
* MacLeay, in Trans. Linn. Soc. vol. xiv.; Ditto, in Zool. Journ. No. 17.; 
Bracey Clark, in Trans. Linn. Soc. vol. xv., Zool. Journ. No. 12.; Keferstein, in 
Bull. Sci. Nat. April 1829; and Latreille, Cours d’Entomol. p. 116. 
+ Just in the same manner as Linnezus was led to believe that Asilus crabroni- 
formis was the insect which caused all the irritation amongst the cattle in the north 
of Europe. ( Tour in Lapland, i. p. 215.) This opinion has been overlooked by 
MacLeay and Clark. 
