INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 85 



way into the head, feeding in the maxillary and frontal sinuses on the 

 mucilage there produced. When full-grown, they fall through the nos- 

 trils to the ground, and assume the pupa. Whether the animal suffers 

 much pain from these troublesome assailants is not ascertained. Some- 

 times the maggots make their way even into the brain. I have been in- 

 formed by a very accurate and intelligent friend, that, on opening the 

 head of one of his sheep which died in consequence of a vertigo, three 

 maggots were found in it in a line just above the eyes, and that behind 

 them there was a bladder of water. Perhaps you are not aware that the 

 bots we are speaking of, or rather those in the head of goats, have been 

 prescribed as a remedy for the epilepsy, and that from the tripod of 

 Delphos. Yet so we are told on the authority of Alexander Trallien. 

 Whether Democrates, who consulted the oracle, was cured by this remedy 

 does not appear ; the story shows however that the ancients were aware 

 of the station of these larvae. The common saying that a whimsical per- 

 son is maggoty, or has got maggots in his head, perhaps arose from the 

 freaks the sheep have been observed to exhibit when infested by their 

 bots. The flesh-fly is also a great annoyance to the fleecy tribe, especi- 

 ally in fenny countries ; and if constant attention be not paid them, they 

 are soon devoured by its insatiable larvae. In Lincolnshire, a principal 

 profit of the druggists is derived from the sale of a mercurial ointment 

 used to destroy them. In tropical countries the sheep frequently suffer 

 from the ants. Bosman relates that when in Guinea, if one of his was 

 attacked by them in the night, which often happened, it was invariably 

 destroyed, and was so expeditious!/ devoured that in the morning only the 

 skeleton would be left. 



Of our domestic animals the least infested by insects, I mean as to the 

 number of species that attack it, is the swine. With the exception of its 

 louse, which seems to annoy it principally by exciting a violent itching, it is 

 exposed to scarcely any other plague of this class, unless we may suppose 

 that it is the biting of flies, which in hot weather drives it to " its wallow- 

 ing in the mire." 



Under this head we may include the deer tribe, for though often wild, 

 those kept in parks may strictly be deemed domestic ; and the rein-deer 

 is quite as much so to the Laplander as our oxen and kine are to us. We 

 learn from Reaumur that the fallow-deer is subject to the attack of two 

 species of gad-fly 1 : one which, like that of the ox, deposits its eggs in an 

 orifice it makes in the skin of the animal, and so produces tumours ; and 

 another, in imitation of that of the sheep, ovipositing in such a manner 

 that its larvae when hatched can make their way into the head, where 

 they take their station, in a cavity near the pharynx. He relates a curious 

 notion of the hunters with respect to these two species. Conceiving them 

 both to be the same, they imagine that they mine for themselves a painful 

 path under the skin, to the root of the horns ,- which is their common 

 rendezvous from all parts of the body ; where, by uniting their labours 

 and gnawing indefatigably, they occasion the annual casting of these orna- 

 mental as well as powerful arms. This fable, improbable and ridiculous 



1 Mr. Curtis (Brit. Ent. 1. 106.) under the name of (Estrus plctus has figured a 

 fine species of gad-fly taken in the New Forest, which he conjectures may be bred 

 from the deer. It may probably be one of the species here alluded to. 



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