74 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



to Silk-Willoughby, under circumstances truly singular. He being of a 

 restless disposition, and not choosing to stay in the parish workhouse, 

 was in the habit of strolling about the neighbouring villages, subsisting on 

 the pittance obtained from door to door : the support he usually received 

 from the benevolent was bread and meat ; and after satisfying the cravings 

 of nature, it was his custom to deposit the surplus provision, particularly 

 the meat, betwixt his shirt and skin. Having a considerable portion of 

 this provision in store, so deposited, he was taken rather unwell, and laid 

 himself down in a field in the parish of Scredington when, from the heat 

 of the season at that time, the meat speedily became putrid and was of 

 course struck by the flies : these not only proceeded to devour the in- 

 animate pieces of flesh, but also literally to prey upon the living substance ; 

 and when the wretched man was accidentally found by some of the in- 

 habitants, he was so eaten by the maggots that his death seemed inevi- 

 table. After clearing away as well as they were able these shocking 

 vermin, those who found Page conveyed him to Asbornby, and a surgeon 

 was immediately procured, who declared that his body was in such a state 

 that dressing it must be little short of instantaneous death ; and in fact 

 the man did survive the operation but a few hours. When first found, 

 and again when examined by the surgeon, he presented a sight loathsome 

 in the extreme ; white maggots of enormous size were crawling in and 

 upon his body, which they had most shockingly mangled, and the re- 

 moving of the external ones served only to render the sight more horrid." 1 

 A medical friend of mine, at Ipswich, gave me this winter an apode 

 larva, voided by a person of that place with his urine, which I now pre- 

 serve in spirits, and can show you when you visit me. It appears to me 

 to belong to the Diptera order, yet not to the fly tribes (Tanystoma Latr.) 

 but rather to the Tipularite of that author, with which, however, it does 

 not seem to agree so entirely as to take away all doubt. It is a very sin- 

 gular larva, and I can find none in any author that I have had an oppor- 

 tunity of consulting which at all resembles it. That you may know it, 

 should you chance to meet with it, I shall here describe it. Body, three- 

 fourths of an inch in length, and about a line in breadth ; opaque, of a 

 pale yellow colour; cylindrical, tapering somewhat at each extremity; 

 consisting of twenty articulations without the head ; head reddish brown, 

 heart-shaped, much smaller than the following joint ; armed with two 

 unguiform mandibles ; with a biarticulate palpus attached exteriorly to the 

 base of each. These mandibles appear to be moved by a narrow black 

 central tendon under the dorsal skin, terminating a little beyond the base 

 of the first segment ; besides, this, there are four others, two on each side 

 of it, the outer ones diverging, much slenderer, and very short. The last 

 or anal joint of the body very minute ; exserting two short, filiform horns, 

 or rather respirator}' organs. I could discover, in this animal, no respi- 

 ratory plates, such as are found in the larvae of Muscidce, tyc., nor were 

 the tracheae visible. When given to me it was alive and extremely active, 

 writhing itself into various contortions with great agility. It moved, like 

 other dipterous larvae, by means of its mandibles. Upon wetting my 

 fingers more than once, to take it up when it had fallen from a table upon 



* In passing through this parish in the spring of 1814, I inquired of the mail- 

 coachman whether he had heard of this story ; and he said the fact was well 

 known. 



