152 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



them ; yet, since a single specimen only has hitherto been 

 taken a , little can be said with respect to it. A worse pest 

 than any hitherto enumerated, is a minute fly, concern- 

 ing the genus of which there is some doubt, Fabricius 

 considering it as a Rhagio, (R. columbaschensis^) and 

 Latreille as a Simulium 5 ; but to whatever genus it may 

 belong, it is certainly a most destructive little creature. 

 In Servia and the Bannat it attacks the cattle in infinite 

 numbers, penetrates, according to Fabricius, their gene- 

 rative organs, but according to other accounts their nose 

 and ears, and by its poisonous bite destroys them in the 

 short space of four or five hours. Much injury was sus- 

 tained in 1813 from this insect in the palatinate of Arad 

 in Hungary and in the Bannat ; in Barilack not fewer 

 than two hundred horned cattle perishing from its attacks, 

 and in Versetz, five hundred. It appears towards the 

 latter end of April or beginning of May in such inde- 

 scribable swarms as to resemble clouds, proceeding as 

 some think from the region of Mehadia, but according 

 to others from Turkey. Its approach is the signal for 

 universal alarm. The cattle fly from their pastures ; and 

 the herdsman hastens to shut up his cows in the house, 

 or, when at a distance from home, to kindle fires, the 

 smoke of which is found to drive off this terrible assailant. 

 Of this the cattle are sensible, and as soon as attacked 



a The writer of the present letter is possessor of this specimen, 

 which he took on himself in a field where oxen were feeding. 

 PLATE V. FIG. 1. 



b In the Systema Antliatorum (p. 56) Fabricius most strangely 

 considers this insect as synonymous with Culcx reptans, L. calling it 

 Scatopse reptans, and dropping his former reference to Pallas, and 

 account of its injurious properties. Meigen (Dipt. i. 294) makes 

 this insect a Simidia under the name of S. maculata. 



