BOTS. 295 



off with a brush and warm v/ater, or still more effectually 

 removed by a pair of scissors. The same may be dene for 

 the hemorrhoidalis from the lips and beard. 



'' The other species being smaller^ more rare, and probably 

 less troublesome, require less our consideration. 



" In respect to the hemorrhoidalis also, where horses have 

 been much out to grass the preceding year, they should 

 occasionally, in the warm months of the next summer, be 

 examined for them; when they will be found, as we have 

 already stated, hanging to the extremity of the rectum, and 

 should be removed by the fingers. The destruction of a 

 single one at this season of the year is not only the death 

 of an individual and its effects, but the almost certain de- 

 struction of a numerous progeny; it is also useful in pre- 

 venting the irritation which the spines of the hot occasioned 

 to the anus, which irritation becomes very distressing to the 

 animal if he is used on the road, occasions him to move 

 awkwardly, wriggle himself about, and to be sluggish, and 

 though beaten severely he soon relapses again into his 

 awkward manner of going ; which, as this happens generally 

 in warm weather, is most commonly attributed to mere 

 laziness/* 



It has been conjectured that bots might prove service- 

 able to the animal by aiding the cuticular coat in the 

 trituration of the food. That Nature should have created 

 an animal, and designed it as an inhabitant of the stomach 

 of another animal, without some good, but, I suspect, as yet 

 unknown end, I think, in unison with others, highly impro- 

 bable — irrecoucileable with her other beautiful and more 

 readily-explained operations : I am, however, for my own 

 part, I must confess, unable to lift up the curtain which is 

 here interposed between fact and design. 



Supposing that Bots do good rather than hurt, surely 

 we cannot be solicitous about removing them ; since, though 

 we are unable to demonstrate their beneficial influence, we 

 may, from all the circumstances we have arrived at a know- 

 ledge of concerning them, at least assert, that they in genkkal 

 are not injurious. Howbeit, we cannot persuade the world 



