INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. && 
way into the head, feeding in the maxillary and frontal sinuses on the 
mucilage there produced. When full-grown, they fall through the nos- 
trils to ‘the ground, and assume the pupa. Whether the animal suffers 
much pain from these troublesome assailants is not ascertained. Some- 
times the maggots make their way even into the brain. I have been in- 
formed by a very accurate and intelligent friend, that, on opening the 
head of one of his sheep which died in consequence of a vertigo, three 
maggots were found in it in a line just above the eyes, and that behind 
them there was a bladder of water. — Perhaps you are not aware that the 
bots we are speaking of, or rather those in the head of goats, have been 
prescribed as a remedy for the epilepsy, and that from the tripod of 
Delphos. Yet so we are told on the authority of Alexander Trallien, 
Whether Democrates, who consulted the oracle, was cured by this remedy 
does not appear ; the story shows however that the ancients were aware 
of the station of these larva. — The common saying that a whimsical per- 
son is maggoty, or has got maggots in his head, perhaps arose from the 
freaks the sheep have been observed to exhibit when infested by their 
bots.— The flesh-fly is also a great annoyance to the fleecy tribe, especi- 
ally in fenny countries ; and if constant attention be not paid them, they 
are soon deyoured by its insatiable larvee. In Lincolnshire, a principal 
profit of the druggists is derived from the sale of a mercurial ointment 
used to destroy them, —In tropical countries the sheep frequently suffer 
from the ants. Bosman relates that when in Guinea, if one of his was 
attacked by them in the night, which often happened, it was invariably 
destroyed, and was so expeditiously devoured that in the morning only the 
skeleton would be left. 
Of our domestic animals the least infested by insects, I mean as to the) 
number of species that attack it, is the swine. With the exception of its 
louse, which seems to annoy it principally by exciting a violent itching, it is 
exposed to scarcely any other plague of this class, unless we may suppose 
that it is the biting of fies, which in hot weather driyes it to “its wallow 
ing in the mire.” 
Under this head we may include the deer tribe, for though often wild, 
those kept in parks may strictly be deemed domestic ; and the rein-deer 
is quite as much so to the Laplander as our oxen and kine are to us. We 
learn from Reaumur that the fallow-deer is subject to the attack of two 
species of gad-fly’: one which, like that of the ox, deposits its eggs in an 
orifice it makes in the skin of the animal, and so produces tumours ; and. 
another, in imitation of that of the sheep, ovipositing in such a manner 
that its larvae when hatched can make their way into the head, where 
they take their station, in a cavity near the pharynx. He relates a curious 
notion of the hunters with respect to these two species. Conceiving them 
both to be the same, they imagine that they mine for themselves a painful 
path under the skin to the root of the horns; which is their common 
rendezvons from all parts of the body; where, by uniting their labours 
and gnawing indefatigably, they occasion the annual casting of these orna- 
mental as well as powerful arms, This fable, improbable and ridiculous 
1 Mr. Curtis (Brit, Znt. t. 106.) under the name of Gstrus pictus has figured a 
fine species of gad-fly taken in the New Forest, which he conjectures may be bred 
from the deer. 1 may probably be one of the species here alluded to, 
a3 
