INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 153 



run towards the smoke, and are generally preserved 

 by it a . 



Tabani in this country do not seem to annoy our oxen 

 so much as they do our horses : perhaps for this immu- 

 nity they may be indebted to the thickness of their hides ; 

 but Virgil's beautiful description of the annoyance that 

 the Grecian CEstrus, called by the Romans Asilus, belongs 

 evidently to one of the Tabanidce. As the passage has 

 not been very correctly translated, I shall turn poet on 

 the occasion, and attempt to give it you in a new dress. 



Through waving groves where Selo's torrent flows, 

 And where, Alborno, thy green Ilex grows, 

 Myriads of insects flutter in the gloom, 

 (CEstrus in Greece, Asilus named at Rome,) 

 Fierce and of cruel hum. By the dire sound 

 Driven from the woods and shady glens around 

 The universal herds in terror fly; 

 Their lowings shake the woods and shake the sky, 

 And Negro's arid shore^ 



In some parts of Africa also insects of this tribe do 

 incredible mischief. What would you think, should you 

 be told that one species of fly drives both inhabitants 

 and their cattle from a whole district? Yet the terrible 

 Tsaltsalya or Zimb of Bruce (and the world seems now 

 disposed to give more credit to the accounts of that tra- 

 veller) has power to produce such an effect. This fly, 

 which is a native of Abyssinia, both from its habits and 

 the figure, appears to belong to the Tabanid^^ and per- 

 haps is congenerous with the CEstrus of the Greeks 5 . 



8 Fabr. Ent. Syst. Em. iv. 276. 22. Latr. Hist. Nat. &c. xiv. 283. 

 Leipz, Zeit. Jul. 5, 1813, quoted in Germar's Mag. der Ent. ii. 185. 



b It is by no means clear that the CEstrus of modern entomologists 

 is synonymous with the insects which the Greeks distinguish by that 

 name. Aristotle not only describes these as blood-suckers (Hist. Ani- 



