THE BOT-FLIES. 623 



hooks ; and the rings of the body are surrounded with 

 rows of smaller hooks or prickles. When they are fully 

 grown, they drop to the ground and burrow in it a short 

 distance. After this, the skin of the maggot becomes a 

 hard and brownish shell, within wliich the insect turns to 

 a pupa, and finally to a fly, and comes out by pushing off 

 a little piece like a lid from the small end of the shell. 



More than twenty different kinds of bot-flies are already 

 known, and several of them are found in this country. 

 Some of them have been brought here with our domesti- 

 cated animals from abroad, and have here multiplied and 

 increased. Three of them attack the horse. The large bot- 

 fly of the horse (^Q aster opMlus equi), (Plate VIII. Fig. 2,) 

 has spotted wings. She lays her eggs about his knees ; the 

 small red-tailed species ( (7. hcemorrhoidalis) on his lips ; 

 and the brown farrier bot-fly ( G. veterinus) under his throat, 

 according to Dr. Roland Green. By rubbing and biting the 

 parts where the eggs are laid, the horse gets the maggots 

 into his mouth, and swallows them with his food. The in- 

 sects then fasten themselves, in clusters, to the inside of his 

 stomach, and live there till they are fully grown. The fol- 

 lowing arc stated to be the symptoms shown by the horse 

 when he is much infested by these insects. He loses flesh, 

 coughs, eats sparingly, and bites his sides ; at length he has 

 a discharge from his nose, and these symptoms are followed 

 by a stiffness of his legs and neck, staggering, difficulty in 

 breathing, convulsions, and death. No sure and safe rem- 

 edy has yet been found sufficient to remove bots from the 

 stomach of the horse. The only treatment to be recom- 

 mended is copious bleeding, and a free use of mild oils, in 

 the early stages of the attack. The preventive means are 

 very simple, consisting only in scraping off the eggs or 

 nits of the fly every day.* 



* See Dr. Green's "Natural History of the Horse-Bee," in Adams's Medical and 

 Agricultural Register, Vol. I. p. 53 ; and the same in the New England Farmer, 

 Vol. IV. p. 345. 



