DIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



Ill 



wretched man was accidentally found by some of the inhabit- 

 ants, he was so eaten by the maggots that his death seemed 

 inevitable. After clearing away as well as they were able 

 these shocking vermin, those who found Page conveyed him 

 to Asbornby, and a surgeon was immediately procured, who 

 declared that his body was in such a state that dressing it 

 must be little short of instantaneous death ; and in fact the 

 man did survive the operation but a few hours. When first 

 found, and again when examined by the surgeon, he presented 

 a sight loathsome in the extreme; white maggots of enormous 

 size were crawling in and upon his body, which they had most 

 shockingly mangled, and the removing of the external ones 

 served only to render the sight more horrid." ^ — A medical 

 friend of mine, at Ipswich, gave me this winter an apode 

 larva, voided by a person of that place with his urine, which 

 I now preserve in spirits, and can show you when you visit 

 me. It appears to me to belong to the Diptera order, yet 

 not to the fly tribes ( Tanystoma Latr.), but rather to the 

 TipularicB of that author, with which however it does not 

 seem to agree so entirely as to take away all doubt. It is a 

 very singular larva, and I can find none in any author that I 

 have had an opportunity of consulting which at all resembles 

 it. That you may know it, should you chance to meet with 

 it, I shall here describe it. Body, three fourths of an inch in 

 length, and about a line in breadth ; opaque, of a pale yellow 

 colour; cylindrical, tapering somewhat at each extremity; con- 

 sisting of twenty articulations without the head : head reddish 

 brown, heart-shaped, much smaller than the following joint ; 

 armed with two unguiform mandibles ; with a biarticulate 

 palpus attached exteriorly to the base of each. These mandibles 

 appear to be moved by a narrow black central tendon under 

 the dorsal skin, terminating a little beyond the base of the first 

 segment ; besides this, there are four others, two on each side of 

 it, the outer ones diverging, much slenderer, and very short. 

 The last or anal joint of the body very minute ; exserting two 

 short, filiform horns, or rather respiratory organs. I could 



1 In passing through this parish in the spring of 1814, I inquired of the mail- 

 coachman whether he had heard of this story ; and he said the fact wjis well 

 known. 



