CESTRIDtE — BOT-FLIES. 303 



has followed, and which has been judiciously explained by- 

 Mr. Clark. 8hakspeare makes the carrier at Rochester 

 observe: "Peas and oats are as dank here as a dog, and 

 that's the next way to give poor jades the bots.^^^ 



The larvae of this insect, says Mr. Clark, are mostly 

 known among the country people by the name of wormals, 

 wormulSy warbles, or, more properly, Bots. And our an- 

 cestors erroneously imagined that poverty or improper food 

 engendered them in horses. The truth, however, seems 

 to be, that when the animal is kept without food the Bots 

 are also, and are then, without doubt, most troublesome ; 

 whence it was very naturally supposed that poverty or bad 

 food was the parent of them.^ 



A cow with its hide perforated by Warbles, in England, 

 was said to be elf-shot : the holes being made by the arrows 

 of the little malignant fairies. In the Northern Antiqui- 

 ties, p. 40-4, we find the following: 



"If at such a time you were to look through an elf-bore 

 in wood, where a thorter knot has been taken out, or 

 through the hole made by an elf- arrow (which has probably 

 been made by a Warble) in the skin of a beast that has 

 been elf-shot, you may see the elf-bull naiging (butting) 

 with the strongest bull or ox in the herd; but you will 

 never see with that eye again." 



In the Scottish history of the trials of witches, we find 

 the following: Alexander Smaill offended Jonet Cock, who 

 threatened him, " deare sail yow rewe it ! and within half 

 ane howre therafter, going to the pleugh, — befoir he had 

 gone one about, their came ane great Wasp or Bee, so that 

 the foir horses did runne away with the pleugh, and wer 

 liklie to have killed themselves, and the said Alexander 

 and the boy that was with him, narrowlie escaped with 

 their lyves."^ Possibly the incident is not exaggerated, as 

 a single (Estrus will turn the oxen of a whole herd, and 

 render them furious. 



Spencer, in his Travels in Circassia, speaks of a poison- 

 ous Fly, known in Hungary under the name of the Golu- 

 baeser-fly, which is singularly destructive to cattle. The 

 Hungarian peasants, to account for the severity of the bite 



1 Henry IV., Pt. I. Act ii. Sc. 1. 



2 Newell's Zool. of the Poets, p. 29. 



' Dalyell's Superstitions of Scotland, p. 564. 



