[15] Report of tee State Entomologist. HI 



Family Characters. 

 The family of Eumenidce, to which this species belongs, contains 

 those of the true wasps, having their wings folded horizontally, which 

 are solitary in their habits, consisting onlj' of males and females; 

 unlike the neighboring Vespidce, which are composed of males, 

 females, and neuters. Some of them, as in the genus Odynerus, in 

 constructing their nests, excavate with their powerful mandibles 

 in sandy banks, in crevices in stone walls, in holes bored in wood by 

 other insects — unlike Eumenes, which builds its mud nests in the open 

 air. 



Hypoderma bovis (De Geer). 



The Ox Warble-Fly. 



(Ord. Dipteka: Fam. CEstrid.e ) 



(Estrus bovis Linn^us : Systema Naturae, 12th edit., ii, 1767, p. 969, 

 No. 1. 



In reply to an inquiry received from "Watertown, Jefferson county, 

 N. T., for information regarding the above-named fly, and for the 

 best method for preventing the deposit of its eggs, the following 

 communication was made to the Country Gentleman, and published in 

 the issue of June 23, 1887. Since that time, the valuable studies of 

 Miss Ormerod, of England, on this species, particularly in the direc- 

 tion, of late, of the enormous losses resulting from its j^revalence, has 

 aroused interest in this country, and important observations have 

 been made upon it. These will not be referred to at the present, as 

 it is understood that the Entomological Division of the Department 

 of Agricultui*e at Washington, will soon publish the results of their 

 careful and extended investigations of the insect, in which they have 

 been for sSme time engaged. 



Warbles are small tumors occurring in the skin of the back of 

 some animals, caused by the presence and operations of a species of 

 fly in its larval stage, contained within them. 



Of these warbles or wurmals (probably derived from worm-holes), 

 several different ones are known, as that of the biiff'alo, produced by 

 Hypoderma bonassi Brauer; of. the ox, by Hypoderma bovis DeGeer; 

 another species believed to belong to the ox or the sheep, Hypoderma 

 lineaia Villers; of the reindeer, by (Edemagena tarandi (Linn.); and an 

 unnamed species, the larvae of whicb were taken from under the skin 

 of the neck of a box turtle, Gistudo Garolina, in Massachusetts 

 {American Naturalist, 1882, xvi, p. 598, larva figured). 



