‘ 
82 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 
and as soon as attacked run towards the smoke, and are generally pre- 
served by it.? 
— Tabani in this country do not seem to annoy our oxen so much’ as they 
do our horses; perhaps for this immunity they may be indebted to the 
thickness of their hides ; but Virgil’s beautiful description of the annoy- 
ance shows that the Grecian Gistrus, called by the Romans Asilus, 
evidently is one of the Tabanide. As the passage has not been very cor- 
rectly translated, I shall turn poet on the occasion, and attempt to give it 
you in a new dress, 
Through waving groves where Selo’s torrent flows, 
And where, Alborno, thy green Ilex grows, 
Myriads of insects flutter in the gloom, 
Estrus in Greece, Asilus named at Rome,) 
ierce and of cruel hum, By the dire sound, 
Driven from the woods and shady glens around, 
The universal herds in terror fly ; 
Their lowings shake the woods and shake the sky, 
And Negro’s arid shore —— 
In some parts of Africa also insects of this tribe do incredible mischief. 
What would you think, should you be told that one species of fly drives 
both inhabitants and their cattle from a whole district? Yet the terrible 
Tsaltsalya or Zimb of Bruce (and the world seems now disposed to give 
more credit to the accounts of that traveller) has power to produce such 
an effect. This fly, which is a native of Abyssinia, both from its habits 
and the figure appears to belong to the Tabanid@, and perhaps is conge- 
nerous with the @strus of the Greeks.? 
1 Fabr. Ent. Syst. Hm. iv. 276, 22. Latr. Hist. Nat. &c. xiv, 283, Leips. Zeit. 
July 5, 1813, quoted in Germar’s Mag. der Ent. ii. 185. In KGllar’s Treatise on In- 
sects injurious to Gardeners, Foresters, and Farmers (Lond, 1840), a valuable work, 
for a translation of which from the German into English we are indebted to the 
Misses London, it is stated (p. 70.) that Dr. Schénbauer, late Professor of Natural 
History at Pesth, has ascertained that the swarms of this fly, which he calls Simulia 
Culumbaschensis, instead of proceeding, as the Wallachians universally believe, from 
the jaws of the dragon killed by St. George, and buried in certain caves in the 
limestone mountains near Columbaez in Servia, out of the mouths of which they 
issue like smoke, in fact are bred in the extensive swamps in the district, passing 
all their states of egg, larva, and nymph in water. Vast swarms appeared in 1830 
in a large tract of Austria, Hungary, and Moravia, overflowed by the river Marsch, 
and hundreds of horses, cows, and swine perished from their bite. Men are equally 
attacked by this scourge, but can more easily defend themselves; and there are not 
wanting solitary examples of little children dying from the excessive inflammation 
consequent on their numerous punctures, 
2 It is by no means clear that the @strus of modern entomologists is synonymous 
with the insects which the Greeks distinguish by that name, Aristotle not only de- 
scribes these as blood-suckers (Hist. Animal, 1, viii. c.11.), but also as furnished with 
a. strong proboscis (1. iv. ¢.7.) He observes likewise that they are produced from an 
animal inhabiting the waters, in the vicinity of which they most abound (1. viii. c. 7.). 
And Ailian (Hist. 1, vi. ¢, 88.) gives nearly the same account. Comparing the 
Gstrus with the Myops (synonymous perhaps with Tabanus Latr., except that 
Aristotle affirms that its larve live in wood, 1. v. c. 19.), he says, the @strus for a 
fly is one of the largest; it has a stiff and large sting (meaning a proboscis), and 
emits a certain humming and harsh sound; but the Myops is like the Cynomyia — 
it hums more loudly than the Gstrus, though it hasa smaller sting. 
These characters and circumstances do not at all agree with the modern 
Cstrus, which, so far from being a blood-sucker furnished with a strong proboscis. 
