6170 



Insects. 



Tlie Tzetze^ or formidalle African Brize Fly, 

 By the Editor of the 'Indian Sporting Review.' 



The aged naturalist and veterinarian Bracy Clark, who for more 

 than sixty years has made an especial study of the Ct^iStridae e. the 

 ''bot-flies" or ''gad-flies," as distinguished from the "brize" or 

 "breeze-flies," — the former of which pass their maggot state within 

 the bodies of quadrupeds, while the latter attack them to suck their 

 blood), has doubtless succeeded in demolishing two alleged new 

 British species of CEstrus, in the 'Zoologist^ (Zool. 5542, 5630); but 

 we must respectfully demur altogether to his identification of the 

 terrible African tzetze with the European OEstrus Bovis (Zool. 5720), 

 which can only be accounted for by an African specimen of the latter 

 having been erroneously shown to the veteran entomologist as an 

 example of the destructive tzetze. 



That the famous reindeer gad-fly {CEdemagena Tarandi) should 

 have lately turned up in Britain might not only have been expected 

 from the recent importations of reindeer into Scotland, to ornament 

 sundry noblemen's demesnes, as remarked by Mr. Clark ; but, from 

 an observation of the distinguished entomologist, Westwood, w^ho, in 

 his elaborate paper on the tzetze and its kindred, published in the 

 Zoological Society's ' Proceedings' for November 26th, 1850, remarks 

 that " at the present time some of the reindeer in the gardens of the 

 Society, which were imported last autumn from Lapland, are infected 

 to a remarkable extent with the tumours of this species ; there must, 

 I think," he adds, " be from fifty to a hundred tumours on one of these 

 animals." Introduced thus into Britain, it is not improbable that it 

 will infest the deer in parks ; for, according to Sir J. Richardson, the 

 reindeer gad-fly attacks the Wapiti stag, but not the moose or bison : 

 and the Wapiti is akin to the European stag or " reindeer," while the 

 fallow deer is at least as nearly aflSned to the reindeer as are the true 

 stags or Elaphine group of Cervidaj. There are, indeed, two distinct 

 species of "bots" which infest the reindeer, one being the CEde- 

 magena Tarandi, the maggot or larva of which inhabits beneath the 

 skin, like that of Hypoderma Bovis, and also at least two species which 

 infest the Lepus tribe in North America; and the other, or Cephene- 

 myia trompe, the maggots of which are found within the frontal sinuses 

 of the animal, as with Cephalemyia Ovis in those of sheep. This, no 



