216 PITHOEA. 



met with lower down in the country, and 

 which is no other than an Oestrus or Gad- 

 fly, (Asiliis crabroniformis). Our Natural 

 Historians confound the Oestrus with the 

 Tahamis, which are as distinct from each 

 other as a hare from a bear*. Cattle in- 

 deed are as much incommoded by the 

 fronts (Tahanus hovinus) as by the very 

 worst of the Fly or Musca tribe, to which 

 the Tahanus certainly belongs ; but by the 

 Oestrus (Asilus) they are frightened out of 



* By this comparison, and the subsequent allusion 

 to an Ichneumon and a Hornet, Linnaeus at the pre- 

 sent period appears to have taken this Asilus for one 

 of the hymenopterous order, and he even calls it an 

 Ichneumon in Act. Upsal. ann. 1736, p. 29, n. 8. 

 The history of its attacking the feet of cattle is given 

 in the first edition of Fauna Suecica, 308, on the au- 

 thority of the country people, but is omitted in the 

 second, probably because Linnaeus found he had been 

 misinformed. My learned entomological friend the 

 Rev. Mr. Kirby observes that the real Oestrus Bovis is, 

 as has from all antiquity been believed, the cause of 

 the above-described agitation in cattle, who escape it 

 by ruiuiing into cool damp places, which it dislikes to 

 frequent. 



