160 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



vous from all parts of the body ; where, by uniting their 

 labours and gnawing indefatigably, they occasion the 

 annual casting of these ornamental as well as powerful 

 arms. This fable, improbable and ridiculous as it is, 

 has had the sanction of grave authorities a . The CEstri 

 last mentioned inhabit, in considerable numbers, two 

 fleshy bags as big as a hen's egg, and of a similar shape, 

 near the root of the tongue. Reaumur took between 

 sixty and seventy bots from one of them, and even then 

 some had escaped. What other purpose these two re- 

 markable purses are intended to answer, it is not easy to 

 conjecture. He supposes that the parent fly must enter 

 the nostrils of the deer, and pass down the air passages 

 to oviposit in them : but probably such a manoeuvre is 

 unnecessary, since there seems no reason, supposing the 

 eggs to be laid in the nostrils, why the larva when 

 hatched cannot itself make its way down to the above 

 station, as easily as that of the sheep into the maxillary 

 sinuses. Or, which perhaps is more likely, when the 

 animal draws in the air, the eggs or larvae may be car- 

 ried down with it, in both cases, to the place assigned to 

 them by Providence b . 



No animal, however, is so cruelly tormented by CEstri 

 as the rein-deer ; for besides one synonymous apparently 

 with this of the deer (CE. nasalis} from which they en- 

 deavour to relieve themselves by snorting and blowing c , 



* Reaum. v. 69. Dlctlonnaire de Trevoux, article Cerf. 



b For the account of the (Estrus, of the deer, see Reaum. v. 67-77. 



c Linn. Lach. Lapp. ii. 45. In the passage here referred to, Linne 

 speaks of two species of CEstrus, though the mode of expression in- 

 dicates that he considered them as the same. One was CE. nasalis 

 from which they freed themselves by snorting, &c., the other CE. 

 Tarandi which formed the pustules in their backs. In Syst. Nat. 969. 



