104 PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
ing green; a bronze face, very lively in appearance. Is it the same 
that they called in Texas or Indian Territory the screw-fly, or is it the 
gad-fly seeking a new field? 
The patient of 1875 is now alive and well. The second case occurred 
two years ago near Collinsville, in this county, and proved fatal. The 
third patient, above named, is getting well. The fourth is reported from 
Georgia; the patient died. 
The first case which I had under my charge was the first which ever 
occurred here. The eggs must have been deposited in the nose several 
days before the fifth, the day the maggots dropped out. On the eley- 
enth day all were discharged. I secured live maggots at that time, 
September 18, 1882. I put soil in an open-mouthed vial and dropped 
the maggots on it; they crawled in the ground in about five minutes. 
I covered the opening with white damastis and hoped that the next 
year the fly would come out of the ground. But on October 6, or 
the twentieth day, the vial had fourteen living flies. So, reckoning 
from six days before the pain commenced for the laying of the eggs, to 
the twelfth day, when the maggot discharged, making eighteen days, 
and to this adding the twenty days during which the grubs were in the 
ground, we have thirty-eight days from the time the fly laid the egg 
until a new generation of flies is produced from them. 
You may think I have dwelt too long on these cases, but if you had 
to stand at the bed and had seen the suffering and despair of the pa- 
tients and found that the worms were eating them up, you would not 
think so. 
Lespectfully, 
FRED. HUMBERT, M. D., F. C. 8. 
P. S.—AIl these cases occurred in the month of September. 
—— 
REPORT BY C. V. RILEY. 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 
Washington, D. C., November 9, 1882. — 
Str: The insect referred to in the accompanying communication from 
Dr. Fred. Humbert, of Alton, Ill., is the Lucilia macellaria of Fabricius, 
the injuries of which to different animals are well known in the South 
and West, where the larva is called the “screw worm.” I have re- 
peatedly endeavored to obtain the true parent of this worm, and have 
published items in reference to it in the American Entomologist, 1880, 
pp. 21, 203, and 275. Dr. Humbert’s communication is most interesting, 
but the specimens yet more so, as the flies he forwards are the first that 
have positively been bred from the larve known as ‘screw worms,” and 
they confirm the above determination of the species. The larve agree 
with others which I have from Texas, taken from the root of the ear of 
a hog which had been bitten by a dog. In De Bow’s Industrial Resources 
