22 Mr. W. S. MacLeay on the (Estrus of Mr. B. Clark. 



" Tabani, Conopsea,* or Culices, were the object of poetic description." 

 M. Latreille, I dare say, has witnessed these practical effects, that is, a 

 Cow dancing a hornpipe with a Gadfly, and I am sure, so have I; but no 

 matter, I shall only hint, that as the " practical pursuits" of Aristotle and 

 other ancients did not much lead them among cattle on the heaths, this 

 may have probably been also the cause of their being so shamefully igno- 

 rant of their own meaning. 



Mr. Clark talks of his " curious discoveries" on this singular tribe of 

 insects. Now, the reason why I committed the heinous fault of over- 

 looking this gentleman in my paper, was, that I conceived these " disco- 

 veries," when correct, to have been already discovered by others, and 

 found these "discoveries," when his own, to be almost always in direct 

 opposition to the fact. In the paper before us, there are, however, some 

 truly curious and original discoveries, and I shall state them at length, in 

 order that Mr. Clark may no longer complain of my overlooking him.f 



First Discovery. — Mr. Clark finds that there is a scoundrelly set of 



* As to " Conopses," I never heard of their existence before, and certainly 

 never mentioned the names in my paper either of these new animals, or of 

 Culices, as being the Q^stri of the ancients. I ought to plead guilty, however, 

 to the accusation that I have been led to suppose that a Culex has been the 

 object of poetic description. If Mr. Clark be not too old to go to school, he 

 will find so too. 



f By far the most accurate and laborious work that has yet appeared on the 

 genus (Estrus, is that of Johannes Leonardus Fischer, published at Leipsic, in 

 1787, This gentleman gives a S^Ko/)5w S/>ecJerM7n, and a correct and detailed 

 account of the natural history and anatomy of ffi*;r. oi'iV, CEstr. bovis, and their 

 respective larvae. And yet this Mr. Bracy Clark, who talks of his curious 

 discoveries, published many years afterwards a work on (Estrus, wherein he 

 describes two or three new species with such abominable names as jie^e/zna* 

 and salutiferus; pirates from Moufiet and Reaumur, the history of (Estrus equi; 

 describes the pupa of (Estrus for its larva, which it appears that he does not 

 even yet know ; gives an anatomy of both pupa and perfect insect that would 

 equally answer for that of a Whale ; and finally makes a new genus, of which 

 to this day he does not know the true character, and names it in direct defiance 

 of every Linnean rule. Such is Mr. Clark's paper on the Bots of Horses, and 

 yet it is indisputably the best paper that the old Linnean School ever published 

 on Zoology in England. I allude not of course to Mr. Kirby's papers, because 

 he belongs to an infinitely superior class of Naturalists. 



