82 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



and as soon as attacked run towards the smoke, and are generally pre- 

 served by it. 1 



Tabani in this country do not seem to annoy our oxen so much as they 

 do our horses ; perhaps for this immunity they may be indebted to the 

 thickness of their hides ; but Virgil's beautiful description of the annoy- 

 ance shows that the Grecian CEstrus, called by the Romans Asilus, 

 evidently is one of the Tabanidce. As the passage has not been very cor- 

 rectly translated, I shall turn poet on the occasion, and attempt to give it 

 you in a new dress. 



Through waving groves where Selo's torrent flows, 

 And where, Alborno, thy green Ilex grows, 

 Myriads of insects flutter in the gloom, 

 (CEstrus in Greece, Asilus named at Rome,) 

 Fierce and of cruel hum. By the dire sound, 

 Driven from the woods and shady glens around, 

 The universal herds in terror fly ; 

 Their lowings shake the woods and shake the sky, 

 And Negro's arid shore 



In some parts of Africa also insects of this tribe do incredible mischief. 

 What would you think, should you be told that one species of fly drives 

 both inhabitants and their cattle from a whole district ? Yet the terrible 

 Tsaltsalya or Zimb of Bruce (and the world seems now disposed to give 

 more credit to the accounts of that traveller) has power to produce such 

 an effect. This fly, which is a native of Abyssinia, both from its habits 

 and the figure appears to belong to the Tabanidce, and perhaps is conge- 

 nerous with the CEstrus of the Greeks. 2 



i Fabr. Ent. Syst. Em. iv. 276. 22. Latr. Hist. Nat. &c. xiv. 283. Leips. Zeit. 

 July 5. 1813, quoted in Germar's Mag. der Ent. ii. 185. In Kb'llar's Treatise on In- 

 sects injurious to Gardeners, Foresters, and Farmers (Lond. 1840), a valuable work, 

 for a translation of which from the German into English we are indebted to the 

 Misses Loudon, it is stated (p. 70.) that Dr. Schonbauer, late Professor of Natural 

 History at Pesth, has ascertained that the swarms of this fly, which he calls Simulia 

 Columbaschensis, instead of proceeding, as the Wallachians universally believe, from 

 the jaws of the dragon killed by St. George, and buried in certain caves in the 

 limestone mountains near Columbaez in Servia, out of the mouths of which they 

 issue like smoke, in fact are bred in the extensive swamps in the district, passing 

 all their states of egg, larva, and nymph in water. Vast swarms appeared in 1830 

 in a large tract of Austria, Hungary, and Moravia, overflowed by the river Marsch, 

 and hundreds of horses, cows, and swine perished from their bite. Men are equally 

 attacked by this scourge, but can more easily defend themselves ; and there are not 

 wanting solitary examples of little children dying from the excessive inflammation 

 consequent on their numerous punctures. 



8 It is by no means clear that the CEstrus of modern entomologists is synonymous 

 with the insects which the Greeks distinguish by that name. Aristotle not only de- 

 scribes these as blood-suckers (Hist. Animal. 1. viii. c. 11.), but also as furnished with, 

 a strong proboscis (1. iv. c. 7.) He observes likewise that thev are produced from an 

 animal inhabiting the waters, in the vicinity of which they most abound (1. viii. c. 7.). 

 And Julian (Hist. l.vi. c. 38.) gives nearly the same* account. Comparing the 

 CEstrus with the Myops (synonymous perhaps with Tabanus Latr., except that 

 Aristotle affirms that its larvae live in wood, 1. v. c. 19.), he says, the CEstrus for a 

 fly is one of the largest ; it has a stiff and large sting (meaning a proboscis), and 

 emits a certain humming and harsh sound ; but the Myops is like the Cyuomyia 

 it hums more loudly than the CEstrus, though it has a smaller sting. 



These characters and circumstances do not at all agree with the modern 

 CEstrus, which, so far from being a blood-sucker furnished with a strong proboscis, 



