220 
The hish Nafufalisi. 
October, 
careful watching through a lens it was seen that they enter 
perpendicularly to the surface, evidently cutting into the 
epidermis with their mouth-hooks and occasionally bending 
their bodies. Mr. R. G. Whelan, A.R.C.Sc,!., Superinten- 
dent of the Ballyhaise Agricultural Station, kindly helped 
in the observations and confirmed them, Six hours after 
having been placed on the calf, the maggots disappeared 
completely. Next morning the spots where they had entered 
were marked with little pimples, like those on the Athenry 
animals, easily to be seen with the naked eye. These 
increased slightly in size, but soon healed up, and in less than 
a week not a trace of the maggots' entrance could be found. 
The boring-in of the maggots seemed at first to cause the 
calf a little pain, but the symptoms of discomfort soon 
passed away. 
We believe, therefore, that no further doubt is possible 
as to the entrance of the young Hypoderma larva into its 
host through the skin close to wherever the eggs may have 
been laid, and the results of the muzzling experiments show 
that effective entrance by the mouth is unlikely. The 
question arises whether these observations of ours lend 
support to the view put forward by some Continental 
students that the second-stage larvae found in the gullet 
have entered by the mouth, but can never make their way 
to the back, and perish before attaining their full size. On 
the whole, the period (October-March) during which these 
larvae are found in the gullet suggests that this organ is 
truly a resting-place for them in their wanderings through 
the tissues — wanderings that are well known to be wide- 
spread. We have still to find out what happens to the 
first -stage larva after it has bored into the skin and how 
far it travels before it undergoes its first moult. Glaser 
found that some eggs of Hypoderma lineatum laid on his 
trousers hatched, and that a maggot bored right through 
into his own skin. From symptoms of swelling and pain 
in various regions he concluded that this maggot travelled 
to his gullet, and he finally extracted it (in the second stage) 
from his mouth ! Dissections of slaughtered heifers from 
Athenry have shown that the entrance -holes made by the 
