172 



THE OX WARBLE, 



{Hypoderma bovis De Geer.) 



With each of the recent, and withal valuable, articles in the Farmers 7 

 Rev iew* relating to the above-named insect, appeared the running head- 

 line, " The First Investigation of the Subject in this Country, " and this 

 rather boastful announcement was coupled with certain reflections on 

 the study of this insect by entomologists of this country, which were 

 scarcely justified and added nothing to the otherwise excellent results 

 obtained. While it is true that no careful estimate of the amount of 

 damage occasioned by the fly in this country had been previously 

 made, and the data relating to this phase of the subject is the most val- 

 uable outcome of the work of the journal referred to, it is also equally 

 true that the life-history and habits of the fly, and the means against it 

 which the Farmers 1 Review recommends to its readers as of most value, 

 have been frequently given in various agricultural and scientific jour- 

 nals of this country. 



Indeed, the chief characteristics and habits of this common cattle pest, 

 which occurs all over the civilized world, have been known, together 

 with some of the means now recognized as of the most avail against it r 

 from the earliest times. One of the best accounts appeared nearly one 

 hundred years ago in the Transactions of the Linncean Society of London^ 

 1796, Vol. Ill, page, 289 in a paper read by Mr. Bracy Clark, entitled 

 "Observations on the Genus CEstrus," in which the habits and means 

 against the Ox Bot were detailed practically as they are known to-day. 

 Yallisnieri, Reaumur, G-eoffroy, De Geer prior to Clark, and Fallen, 

 Joly, Brauer and Schiner subsequently, have each published careful 

 observations. 



This insect has not attracted so much attention in the United States 

 as in England, especially since Miss Ormerod began to investigate and 

 publish upon the subject. Nor is its work so important with us as it is 

 in England, on account of the relatively higher price of cattle and hides 

 there. Yet in our scrap books we have a considerable number of arti- 

 cles clipped from American journals during the past twenty years, and 

 in January, 1877, we published in the Scientific American an article on 

 Bots which was quite widely quoted, and which, while dealing with bots 

 in general, gave briefly the habits, ravages, and means against R. bovis. 



We may here reproduce that article as far as it refers to the insect 

 under discussion, and add such farther details as may be necessary to 

 a full understanding of the subject : 



* * * Almost all cloven-footed animals, and many other herbivorous species,' are 

 infested with bots. These are legless grubs which fall into three categories : (I) Gas- 

 tric, or those which are swallowed by the animal infested, and which live in the stomach 

 in a " bath of chyle." (2) Cephalic, or those which crawl up the nostrils and inhabit 

 the frontal sinuses. (3) Cutaneous, or those which dwell in tumors just beneath 



* See Insect Life, Vol. II, No. 5 (Nov., 1889) pp. 156-158. 



