128 THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. 



stroying them by any medicine or poison thrown into the stomach. 

 After opium had been administered to a horse laboring under 

 locked jaw for a week, in doses of one ounce every day, bots 

 were found in the stomach perfectly alive. Tobacco has been 

 employed in much larger quantities in the same complaint, and 

 has also been continued without destroying them." Mr. White, 

 V. S., says, " While making experiments on glanders, I found 

 living bots in the stomach of a horse, though he had been taking, 

 for many days, arsenic and corrosive sublimate." * Mr. Blaine 

 says, " that he has kept them alive for some days in olive oil, and 

 in oil of turpentine, and that even the nitrous and sulphuric acids 

 do not immediately destroy them." The history and habits of 

 the bot are thus alluded to by Mr. Clark : " Bots are not, prop- 

 erly speaking, worms, but the larvae of the gadfly, which deposits 

 its eggs on the horse's coat in such a manner as that they shall 

 be received into his stomach, and then become bots. When the 

 female fly has become impregnated, and the eggs are sufficiently 

 matured, she seeks among the horses a subject for her purpose, 

 and approaching it on the wing, she holds her body nearly up- 

 right in the air, and her tail, which is lengthened for the purpose, 

 carried inwards and upwards. In this way she approaches the 

 part where she designs to deposit the eggs, and suspending her- 

 self for a few seconds before it, suddenly darts upon it, and leaves 

 the egg adhering to the hair by means of a glutinous liquor se- 

 creted with it. She then leaves the horse at a small distance, 

 and prepares the second egg ; and poising herself before the part, 

 deposits it in the same way ; the liquor dries, and the egg becomes 

 firmly glued to the hair. This is repeated by various flies, till 

 four or five hundred eggs are sometimes deposited on one horse. 

 They are usually deposited on the legs, side, and back of the 

 shoulder — those parts most exposed to be licked by the animal: 

 in licking, the eggs adhere to the tongue, and are carried into the 



* Very nice articles to experiment with, truly ! And yet we are sorry to say 

 that experiments — for they cannot be called any thing else — are daily made 

 in this city with agents whose therapeutic powers are so diversified that the 

 wisest of the faculty have never ventured to fix limits to their action. They 

 are like the torch in the hands of an incendiary. The healthy parts must suffer 

 equally with the diseased. 



