120 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS 



sheep which died in consequence of a vertigo, three maggots were found 

 in it in a line just above the eyes, and that behind them there was a blad- 

 der of water. — Perhaps you are not aware that the hots we are speaking 

 of, or rather those in the head of goats, have been prescribed as a remedy 

 for the epilepsj, and that from the tripod of Delphos. Yet so we are told, 

 on the authority of Alexander Trallien. Whether Democrates, who con- 

 sulted the oracle, was cured by this remedy does not appear ; the story 

 shows however that the ancients were aware of the station of these 

 larvae. — The common saying that a whimsical person is maggoty, or has 

 got maggots in his head, perhaps arose from the freaks the sheep have 

 been observed to exhibit when infested by their bots. — The flesh-fly is 

 also a great annoyance to the fleecy tribe, especially in fenny countries ; 

 and if constant attention be not paid them, they are soon devoured by its 

 insatiable larvae. In Lincolnshire, a principal profit of the druggists is 

 derived from the sale of a mercurial ointment used to destroy them. — In 

 tropical countries the sheep frequently suffer from the ants. Bosman relates 

 that when in Guinea, if one of his was attacked by them in the night, 

 which often happened, it was invariably destroyed, and was so expediously 

 devoured that in the morning only the skeleton would be left.. 



Of our domestic animals the least infested by insects, I mean as to the 

 number of species that attack it, is the swine. With the exception of its 

 louse, which seems to annoy it principally by exciting a violent itching, it 

 is exposed to scarcely any other plague of this class, unless we may sup- 

 pose that it is the biting of flies, which in hot weather drives it to " its 

 wallowing in the mire." 



Under this head we may include the deer tribe, for, though often wild, 

 those kept in parks may strictly be deemed domestic ; and the rein-deer is 

 quite as much so to the Laplander as our oxen and kine are to us. We learn 

 from Reaumur that the fallow-deer is subject to the attack of two species 

 of gad-fly^ : one which, like that of the ox, deposits its eggs in an orifice 

 it makes in the skin of the animal, and so produces tumors ; and another, 

 in imitation of that of the sheep, ovipositing in such a manner that its 

 larvae when hatched can make their way into the head, where they take 

 their station, in a cavity near the pharynx. He relates a curious notion 

 of the hunters with respect to these two species. Conceiving them both 

 to be the same, they imagine that they mine for themselves a painful path 

 under the skin to the root of the horns ; which is their common rendezvous 

 from all parts of the body ; where, by uniting their labors and gnawing 

 indefiitigably, they occasion the annual casting of these ornamental as well 

 as powerful arms. This fable, improbable and ridiculous as it is, has had 

 the sanction of grave authorities.^ — The (CEstri last mentioned inhabit, in 

 considerable numbers, two fleshy bags as big as a hen's egg, and of a sim- 

 ilar shape, near the root of the tongue. Reaumur took between sixty and 

 seventy bots from one of them, and even then some had escaped. 

 What other purpose these two remarkable purses are intended to answer, 

 it is not easy to conjecture. He supposes that the parent fly must enter 

 the nostrils of the deer, and pass down the air passages to oviposit in thera : 



' Mr. Curlis (Brit. Bnt. t. 106.) under the name of CEstrus pictiis ha.s figured a fine species 

 of gad-fly taken in the New Forest, which he conjectures may be bred from the deer. It 

 may probably be one of the species here alluded to. 



2 Reaum. v. 69. Dictionnaire de Trevoux, article Cerf. 



