LIST' OF SPECIFICS AND REMEDIES. 59 



asites are rarely injurious. In an unhealthy con- 

 dition of the system, they may unduly accumu- 

 late, and occasion some inconvenience, but they 

 never feed upon the surface to which they are 

 attached, but only upon the contents of the organs 

 in which they exist. 



The history of the bot, the most formidable of 

 horse parasites, is as follows : Towards the close 

 of autumn, the female gad-fly, (octrus epui,) fixes 

 its eggs upon the hair of the horse's legs, by 

 means of a sticky substance, exuded with the 

 egg. By means of the horses tongue and lips, 

 these eggs are carried to the mouth, and so on 

 down to the stomach, where the eggs farther de- 

 velope in the form of grubs, are attached, by 

 means of their hooks, to the sides of the organ, 

 while their heads remain floating in its fluids, 

 upon which it feeds. Having arrived at maturity, 

 th<-y are separated, pass along the intestines, and 

 are expelled with the dung, after which they 

 again burst the shell, and rise in the summer in 

 the form of the gad-fly. 



SYMPTOMS. Some horses are supposed to suffer 

 much from bots, while others, in the most perfect 

 health, have an abundance of them. Often there 

 are no symptoms to indicate their presence, but 



fenerally, when in great numbers, the horse loses 

 esh and strength, until he becomes a skeleton, 

 and can scarcely move about ; he has turns of 

 griping pains in the belly ; eats and drinks greed- 

 ily ; the oats pass off undigested, and the dung 

 has a bad smell. The only sure criterion of the 

 existence of bots or worms is their presence, 

 hanging about the anus, or mixed with the dung 

 of the animal. 



There are also the long round worm, similar to 

 the common earth-worm, and the small pin-worm, 



