APPENDIX. 191 



I have already laid fo much of this infect, that it would 

 be tiring my reader's patience to repeat any thing concern- 

 ing him. I mall therefore content myfelf, by giving a very 

 accurate defign of him, only obferving, that, for diftinctnefs 

 fake, I have magnified him fomething above twice the natu- 

 ral fize. He has no fling, though he feems to me to be rather 

 of the bee kind; but his motion is more rapid and fudden than 

 that of the bee, and refembles that of the gad-fly, in England, 

 There is fomething particular in the found, or buzzing of 

 this infect. It is a jarring noife, together with a humming ; 

 which induces me to believe it proceeds, at leaft in part, 

 from a vibration made with the three hairs at his fnout. 



The Chaldee vernon is content with calling this animal 

 limply Zebub, which lignifies the fly in general, as we ex- 

 prefs it in Englilh. The Arabs call it Zimb in their trans- 

 lation, which has the fame general fignification. The Ethi- 

 opic tranllation calls it Tfaltfalya, which is the true name of 

 this particular fly in Geez, and was the fame in Hebrew. 



The Greeks have called this fpecies of fly Cynomya, 

 which lignifies the dog- fly, in imitation of which, thofe, I 

 fuppofe, of the church of Alexandria, that, after the coming 

 of Frumentius, were correcting the Greek copy, and making 

 it conformable to the Septuagint, have called this fly Tfalt- 

 falya Kelb, to anfvver the word Cynomya, which is dog- fly. 

 But this at firft fight is a corruption, apparently the language 

 of ftrangers, and is not Ethiopic. It is the fame as if we 

 were to couple the two nominative fubflantives Canis and 

 Mufca, to tranflate Cynomya. Canis is indeed a dog, and 

 Mufca is a fly, but thefe two words together, as I have now 

 wrote them, could never be brought to fignify dog- fly. It is 



1 the 



