15:2 NATURAL HISTORY 



for more modern entomologists have discovered that 

 singular production to be derived from the egg of the 

 Musca Chamceleon 5 : see Geoffroy, t. 17. f. 4. 



A full history of noxious insects hurtful in the field, 

 garden, and house, suggesting all the known and likely 

 means of destroying them, would be allowed by the 



grown, from the stomach; its passage through the intestines to remain, 

 during its pupa state, in some convenient spot of dung or earth ; some 

 anatomical particulars respecting it; and many other facts relating to 

 the fly in its various stages, as well as to other species ; the reader is 

 referred to the paper in the Linnean Transactions, from which the above 

 extracts are taken. Interesting as they are, the explanation of them 

 would extend this note to too great a length, and would carry it alto- 

 gether away from the point to which it is chiefly directed, the admira- 

 ble provision adverted to in the text for securing for the bots the only 

 habitation in which they could exist. 



One other observation may, however, be permitted. Mr. Bracy Clark 

 does not appear to regard these larvae of the bot-fly as being productive 

 of injurious effects to horses; but, on the contrary, he suggests that the 

 local irritation produced by them may be useful in preventing the access 

 of disease. The opinion expressed by him on this point in 1796 would 

 seem to have been confirmed by his subsequent experience ; for, nearly 

 twenty years afterwards, in 1815, he gave the name of salutiferus to a 

 species then discovered by him in a somewhat curious manner. Having 

 observed in the stomachs of dead horses which he had examined several 

 larvae which appeared to him to be different from any that he had previously 

 seen, he removed some of them and forced them down the throat of his 

 own horse: two or three months afterwards the pupae were received from 

 the latter, and were placed on some light mould in a jar, in which they 

 quickly buried themselves. This curious attempt at breeding a bot-fly, 

 the first experiment of the kind on record, proved thoroughly successful ; 

 and Mr. Bracy Clark was rewarded for his sagacious discrimination, by 

 obtaining, on the developement of the fly, specimens of a nondescript 

 species of a genus which he had made especially his own. E. T. B. 



3 The singular and highly interesting larva of the Stratiomys Chama- 

 leon, DE GEEK, has been repeatedly figured and described , and the use 

 of the star-like circle of feathered hairs appended to its tail, as a means 

 of suspending that part and the orifice of the respiratory tube in their 

 centre, has been often explained: it is among the most beautiful as well 

 as the most curious contrivances resorted to for such a purpose by ever 

 varying nature. The eggs from which these lar\a? are produced are 

 affixed by the parent fly to plants living in the water in which the deve- 

 lopement of the maggot is to take place : those seen by Messrs. Kirby 

 and Spence were " arranged like tiles on a roof one laid partly over 

 another, on the under side of the leaves of the water-plantain." 

 E. T. B. 



