INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 151 



them no material injury. Indeed they occasion consi- 

 derable tumours under the skin, where the bots reside, 

 varying in number from three or four to thirty or forty ; 

 but these seem unattended by any pain, and are so far 

 from being injurious, that they are rather regarded as 

 proofs of the goodness of the animal, since these flies 

 only attack young and healthy subjects. The tanners 

 also prefer those hides that have the greatest number 

 of bot-holes in them, which are always the best and 

 strongest a . 



The Stomoxys, and several of the other flies before enu- 

 merated, as well as the dog and American ticks, are as pre- 

 judicial to the ox as to the horse. One species of Hip- 

 pobosca I have reason to believe is appropriated to them ; 

 yet, since a single specimen only has hitherto been taken b / 

 little can be said with respect to it. — A worse pest than 

 any hitherto enumerated, is a minute fly, concerning the 

 genus of which there is some doubt, Fabricius consider- 

 ing it as a Rhagio, (M. columbaschensis,) and Latreille as 

 a Simulium c ; but to whatever genus it may belong, it is 

 certainly a most destructive little creature. In Servia 

 and the Bannat it attacks the cattle in infinite numbers, 

 penetrates, according to Fabricius, their generative or- 

 gans, but according to other accounts their nose and 

 ears, and by its poisonous bite destroys them in the short 



a Much of the information here collected is taken from Reaum. 

 iv. Mem. 12; and Clark in Linn. Trans, iii. 289. 



b The writer of the present letter is possessor of this specimen, 

 which he took on himself in a field where oxen were feeding. 

 Plate V. Fig. 1. 



r In the Systema Antliatorum (p. 56) Fabricius most strangely 

 considers this insect as synonymous with Culex reptans, L. calling it 

 Scatopse reptans, and dropping his former reference to Pallas, and 

 account of its injurious properties. 



