1910.] Official Circulars and Notices. 317 



The following notice on the Warble Fly has been communicated to 

 the Press by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for 

 Ireland : — 



Prevention of The Department's Advisory Committee on 



Warble-fly. Cattle-breeding met last week, Mr. T. W. 



Russell presiding, and among other questions 

 considered that of the loss caused to cattle owners by warbled hides 

 and warbled beef. The Committee deemed it desirable that the exact 

 position with regard to this pest as indicated by the experiments which 

 the Department have for the last six years been making at their 

 Agricultural Station, Ballyhaise, County Cavan, and elsewhere should 

 be made known to the public, inasmuch as there appears to exist at 

 present considerable confusion in the minds of agriculturists and others 

 as to the best means of eradicating the pest. 



Up to a few years ago the belief was held that the fly laid its 

 eggs on the backs of the cattle in summer, and that out of these eggs 

 maggots were hatched which worked their way through the skin, under 

 which they gradually developed into the well-known warbles. The 

 remedy then in vogue was founded upon the belief that the eggs were 

 laid on the backs of the cattle and that the maggots gained entrance 

 by working their way down through the skin. It consisted in smear- 

 ing the backs of the cattle in summer with train oil or some other 

 preparation likely to prevent the fly laying its eggs on the smeared 

 portions of the animal. This remedy was, however, tried repeatedly 

 and most thoroughly by the Department on one half of a batch of 

 cattle at their school farm at Ballyhaise. The backs of the cattle so 

 treated were, however, found to be as full of warbles the following 

 spring as the backs of those which were not treated. These tests show 

 (1) that smearing in summer, after the fly is out, to prevent egg laying 

 appears to be useless, and (2) that our knowledge as to how the 

 maggots gain access under the skin of the back of the animals is 

 still obscure. 



Repeated experiments to elucidate the manner of egg-laying and the 

 way in which the maggots gain entrance have been made at Ballyhaise, 

 but up to the present there is no definite result, and the difficulty of 

 the problem has been intensified by the fact that Professor Carpenter, 

 of the Royal College of Science, who has been conducting these 

 experiments for the Department, has had no trouble in finding young 

 maggots embedded in the tissues of the gullet of young cattle slaughtered 

 in October. 



The details of the various experiments on this subject need not be 

 given here; they are to be found in the publications of the Department. 



But, however the maggots gain entrance, there can be no doubt 

 that in the spring they are all to be found under the skin on the backs 

 of cattle, and if they were all destroyed before they escaped there 

 could be no more flies, no more eggs, and therefore no more warbles. 

 The Department have, therefore, for some years directed the attention 

 of farmers to the destruction of the warbles before they escape. This 

 was also strongly advocated at the recent meeting of the Council of 

 Agriculture, and it has been repeatedly referred to in the Department's 

 Reports on the subject. The method suggested in the Department's 

 Reports of squeezing out the warbles has, however, been objected to 



