36 MORE MINOR HORRORS 



on for several years which show that cattle 

 unable to lick themselves are not protected 

 from warbles, Professor G. H. Carpenter of the 

 Royal College of Science, Dublin, concluded that 

 the larvae do not enter by the mouth. During 

 the summer of 1914, he and his able assistant, 

 the late Mr. T. R. Hewitt, definitely proved 

 that ' the newly hatched maggot does bore 

 through the skin of cattle ' ; probably after 

 an ecdysis they find their way to the sub- 

 mucous coat and muscles of the gullet, and 

 here for a while they rest. I quote from the 

 account of Carpenter and Hewitt some of 

 their most crucial experiments carried out 

 at the Athenry and Ballyhaise Stations of 

 the Irish Department of Agriculture : — 



In July 1914, twenty-four maggots were hatched 

 in the incubator, and some of these were used for 

 observations as to behaviour when placed on a 

 calf's body. Glaser, in 1913, had tried to carry out 

 observations of this kind by placing maggots on a 

 shaved portion of a calf's skin ; he found that they 

 made no effort to bore through. Instead of being 

 shaved, a small patch of the shoulder of one of the 

 Ballyhaise calves was clipped, so as to have the condi- 

 tions as normal as possible, when newly hatched mag- 

 gots of H. hovis were placed on it. Immediately they 

 started crawling down the clipped hairs to the 

 skin, and, as soon as they reached the surface, they 

 began to burrow. On account of their small size 

 it is hard to discern them, but by carefully watching 



