90 INSECTS AFFECTING DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 
aware of. To use a common remark, they soon ‘‘bate”—i.e., give less milk. To 
drive a cow fast or cause her to be excited reduces the quantity and quality of the 
milk. Without perfect quiet and rest they can not do their best for us. This leads 
me to one important point. What is our loss in the cheese tub caused by the warble 
and gad flies? I have tried to estimate the loss during the four or five summer 
months or even the eight months that a cow is supposed to be in profit. There are 
certain times of unrest when the cow will give about half of her usual flow of milk. 
These tormenting flies and the presence of the prickly-coated warble maggot must 
keep up a perpetual uneasiness and retard the growth of our feeding cattle, to our 
loss, it may be, of £2 per head. In the dairy cows the loss will be greater. The 
daily loss of milk may make a ditference of a hundredweight of cheese per cow per 
annum. Half a hundredweight, or 12 per cent of milk less in a dairy, making 4 
hundredweight at 70 shillings, comes to 35 shillings. But 12 per cent is too low an 
estimate. It may in some cases be put at £5 per head, and in a dairy of 100 cows 
would show a loss of £300. , 
This source of injury, however, lasts but a few weeks during summer, 
and probably does not compare with the loss due to the presence of the 
maggots. This must be a constant source of irritation to the animal. 
and a drain upon its energies from the time the warble begins to grow 
until the sore heals after the departure of the maggot. .~It extends 
through at least one-third of the year, while the whole period of inva- 
sion probably lasts for eight or nine months. Imagine some fifteen 
or twenty boils or carbuncles located along the back producing a reg- | 
ular supply of muco-purulent matter due to the inflammation and sup- 
plying nutriment to a healthy grub which grows to be three-fourths of 
an inch in length, and suppose, if possible, that these are no discom- 
fort or cause of loss to the creature affected with them. ? 
The occasional attacks of one or more species of bots upon man and 
the discomfort caused by them in such cases would seem to be sufficient 
proof of the irritation caused in the lower animals, even if we allow 
something on the ground that these lower animals are less sensitive to 
pain. Omitting, however, the creature’s comfort as a matter of mere 
sentiment and considering the question from the practical standpoint 
of money returned, it requires only the very modest estimate of the loss 
of $1 per head to the cattle of the United States to show a loss of about 
$36,000,000 sustained by the country on the basis of the census of 1880 
(doubtless between fifty and sixty millions at the present time). Young. 
animals are injured more than old ones, and many writers assert that 
deaths are not infrequent from the effects of warbles. 
Without considering the lessened quantity, the inferiority of the beef of animals 
infested by the grub is strikingly shown in an article on the subject in which the 
testimony of retail butchers and buyers of meat in Chicago and other cities is given. 
It is shown that the buyers of the highest class of meat, who supply hotels.and res- _ 
taurants, will not on any account purchase carcasses showing traces of warble attack. 
Such beef has to be sold, therefore, at a price below that obtainable for good beef, 
free from grub damage, and the lessened value per animal was put at from $2 to $5. 
The appearance known as licked-beef, which, resulting from the presence of the 
grub, may be described as a moist or running surface of a greenish-yellow color, is 
certainly unwholesome in look, if not in fact. The description of such meat as given 
in the Farmers’ Review, quoting again largely from Miss Ormerod, is almost sufficient 
to turn one against beef altogether.—(INsEcr LIFE. ) 
