BOTS. 153 
and aspect of unthriftiness, after a run at grass, generally declare bots to 
be present within the body. 
Uninformed persons are always desirous to possess some medicine 
which will destroy bots; they wonder that science lacks invention suf- 
ficient to compound such an agent. An anecdote may probably dispel 
such astonishment. 
A patron of the Royal Veterinary College was once conducted by a 
pupil through the museum belonging to that establishment; the pair at 
last stood before the preparation of a horse’s stomach, eaten throagh by, 
and also covered with, bots. 
“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the visitor, after the nature of the 
specimen had been explained. ‘What a spectacle! What a myriad of 
tormentors! And have you no medicine to remove such nuisances? 
Can veterinary science discover nothing capable of destroying those 
parasites ?” 
“Why, sir,” replied the student, “only look at that preparation. To 
my knowledge, it has been put up in spirits of wine, and corked air tight 
for two years. The creatures must be either very dead or very drunk by 
this time ; yet, as you witness, they hold on. What sort of physic could 
accomplish more than is already effected by the spirits of wine and close 
confinement? I am at a loss to conjecture !” 
For the above, the author is indebted to the admirable lectures de- 
livered by Professor Spooner; but the conclusion drawn by the student 
must be more than satisfactory. Bots, once within the stomach, must 
remain there till the following year, when, being matured, their hold of 
the lining membrane of the viscus will relax, and, in the form of a 
chrysalis, they are ejected from the system. No medicine can expedite 
the transformation. It has hitherto appeared easier to kill the horse 
than to remove the parasite. 
To the investigation of Bracy Clark, Esq., V.8., the public owe all 
their knowledge of the fly whence the bot is derived. The common 
parent, according to the above authority, is the cestrus equi; and the 
author gladly avails himself of the original description by the above- 
named talented gentleman. 
“ON THE CSTRUS EQUI, OR THE STOMACH BOT. 
“When the female has been impregnated, and the eggs sufficiently 
matured, she seeks among the horses a subject for her purpose, and 
approaching him on the wing, she carries her body nearly upright in the 
air, and her tail, which is lengthened for the purpose, curved inward and 
upward: in this way she approaches the part where she designs to de- 
