74 DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
to Silk-Willoughby, under circumstances truly singular. He being of a 
restless disposition, and not choosing to stay in the parish workhouse, 
was in the habit of strolling about the neighbouring villages, subsisting on 
the pittance obtained from door to door: the support he usually received 
from the benevolent was bread and meat ; and ufter satisfying the cravin 
of nature, it was his custom to deposit the surplus provision, particularly 
the meat, betwixt his shirt and skin. Having a considerable portion of 
this provision in store, so deposited, he was taken rather unwell, and laid 
himself down in a field in the parish of Seredington — when, from the heat 
of the season at that time, the meat speedily became putrid and was of 
course struck by the flies: these not only proceeded to devour the in- 
animate pieces of flesh, but also literally to prey upon the living substance ; 
and when the wretched man was accidentally. found by some of the in- 
habitants, he was so eaten by the maggots that his death seemed inevi- 
table. After clearing away as well as they were able these shocking 
vermin, those who found Page conveyed him to Asbornby, and a surgeon 
was immediately procured, who declared that his body was in such a state 
that dressing it must be little short of instantaneous death; and in fact 
the man did survive the operation but a few hours. When first found, 
and again when examined by the surgeon, he presented a sight loathsome 
in the extreme ; white maggots of enormous size were crawling in and 
upon his body, which they had most shockingly mangled, and the re- 
moving of the external ones served only to render the sight more horrid.” ! 
— Amedical friend of mine, at Ipswich, gave me this winter an apode 
larva, voided by a person of that place with his urine, which I now pre- 
serve in spirits, and can show you when you visit me. It appears to me 
to belong to the Diptera order, yet not to the fly tribes (Zanystoma Latr.) 
but rather to the Tipularie of that author, with which, however, it does 
not seem to agree so entirely as to take away all doubt. It is a very sin- 
gular larva, and I can find none in any author that T have had an oppor- 
tunity of consulting which at all resembles it. ‘That you may know it, 
should you chance to meet with it, I shall here describe it. Body, three- 
fourths of an inch in length, and about a line in breadth; opaque, of a 
pale yellow colour; cylindrical, tapering somewhat at each extremity ; 
consisting of twenty articulations without the head ; head reddish brown, 
heart-shaped, much smaller than the following joint; armed with two 
unguiform mandibles ; with a biarticulate palpus attached exteriorly to the 
base of each. These mandibles appear to be moved by a narrow black 
central tendon under the dorsal skin, terminating a little beyond the base 
of the first segment; besides, this, there are four others, two on: each side 
of it, the outer ones diverging, much slenderer, and very short. The last 
or anal joint of the body very minute; exserting two short, filiform horns, 
or rather respiratory organs. I could discover, in this animal, no respi- 
ratory plates, such as are found in the larvae of Muscide, §c., nor were 
the trachez visible. When given to me it was alive and extremely active, 
writhing itself into various contortions with great agility. It moved, like 
other dipterous larva, by means of its mandibles. Upon wetting my 
fingers more than once, to take it up when it had fallen from a table upon 
1 Tn passing through this parish in the spring of 1814, I inquired of the mail~ 
coachman whether he had heard of this story; and he said the fact was well 
known, 
