158 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



to the ground. The object of all these actions and 

 movements is to keep the gad-fly appropriated to them 

 (CE. Ovis) from getting at their nostrils, on the inner 

 margin of which they lay their eggs, from whence the 

 maggots make their way into the head, feeding in the 

 maxillary and frontal sinuses on the mucilage there pro- 

 duced. When full-grown, they fall through the nostrils 

 to the ground and assume the pupa. Whether the ani- 

 mal suffers much pain from these troublesome assailants 

 is not ascertained. Sometimes the maggots make their 

 way even into the brain. I have been informed by a 

 very accurate and intelligent friend, that, on opening the 

 head of one of his sheep which died in consequence of a 

 vertigo, three maggots were found in it in a line just 

 above the eyes, and that behind them there was a blad- 

 der of water. Perhaps you are not aware that the bots 

 we are speaking of, or rather those in the head of goats, 

 have been prescribed as a remedy for the epilepsy, and 

 that from the tripod of Delphos. Yet so we are told on 

 the authority of Alexander Trallien. Whether Demo- 

 crates, who consulted the oracle, was cured by this re- 

 medy does not appear ; the story shows however that the 

 ancients were aware of the station of these larvae. The 

 common saying that a whimsical person is maggoty, or 

 has got maggots in his head, perhaps arose from the 

 freaks the sheep have been observed to exhibit when in- 

 fested by their bots. The flesh-fly is also a great an- 

 noyance to the fleecy tribe, especially in fenny countries ; 

 and if constant attention be not paid them, they are soon 

 devoured by its insatiable larvae. In Lincolnshire, the 

 principal profit of the druggists is derived from the sale 

 of a mercurial ointment used to destroy them. In tro- 



