ox GAD FLY. xlv 



fly, the galloping of the cattle is as bad from this cause as from 

 Warble Fly presence. 



The Ox Gad Fly, figured below, life size, is very much larger than 

 the Warble Fly, and is mostly brown or bees-wax colour ; the abdomen 

 handsomely banded across with alternate brown and tawny yellow. 

 This fly does mischief by piercing into the hide with the sharp knife- 

 or lancet-like apparatus, enclosed in its proboscis, possessed by the 

 female, and sucking away the blood. This is a great distinction 



Tabanus bovimts, " Ox Gad Fly "; side view, showing proboscis. 



between the Gad Fly and the Warble Fly, which has nothing that can 

 be called a feeding-mouth. 



The two kinds of flies differ also in their early stages. The maggot 

 of the Gad Fly never lives in the hides of cattle. It lives in the ground, 

 something in the manner of the Daddy Longlegs grub, and, somewhat 

 similarly, is long and cylindrical, and it has a shining brown elongated 

 head. The chrysalis is long and somewhat cylindrical, and both in 

 development and pupation these Gad Flies resemble the Daddy Lon"-- 

 legs. The buzz of this great fly is described as a kind of heavy, 

 droning, intense noise, easily known when it has once been heard. 



I believe this fly not to be very common in England, and I have 

 only rarely received specimens ; but it is sometimes greatly confused 

 with the Warble Fly, without the slightest regard to its very name 

 showing the difference of possession of the "mouth-gads," or prickers 

 which are such a clear distinction, and therefore it seems desirable to 

 mention it. 



As far as we are aware, the same deterrent dressings which are 

 useful against the Warble Fly serve equally well against this Gad Fly. 

 It will be observed that in the remarks by Mr. David Byrd, at p. 44, 

 he mentions, " The brisket was dressed to keep the Gad Fly away." 



