122 INDIEECT INJUEIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



when at a distance from home, to kindle fires, the smoke of 

 which is found to drive off this terrible assailant. Of this 

 the cattle are sensible, and as soon as attacked run towards 

 the smoke, and are generally preserved by it.' 



Tabani in this country do not seem to annoy our oxen so much 

 as they do our horses : perhaps for this immunity they may be 

 indebted to the thickness of their hides; but Virgil's beautiful 

 description of the annoyance shows that the Grecian CEstrus, 

 called by the Romans Asilus, evidently is one of the Taba- 

 nidcE, As the passage has not been very correctly translated, 

 I shall turn poet on the occasion, and attempt to give it you 

 in a new dress. 



Through waving groves where Sale's torrent flows, 

 And where, Alborno, thy green Ilex grows, 

 Myriads of insects flutter in the gloom, 

 (QEstrus in Greece, Asilus named at Rome,) 

 Fierce and of cruel hum. By the dire sound, 

 Driven from the woods and shady glens around, 

 The universal herds in terror fly ; 

 Their lowings shake the woods and shake the sky, 

 And Negro's arid shore 



In some parts of Africa also insects of this tribe do incre- 

 ble mischief. What would you think, should you be told 

 that one species of fly drives both inhabitants and their cattle 

 from a whole district ? Yet the terrible Tsaltsalya or Zimb 



such an effect. This fly, which is a native of Abyssinia, both 

 from its habits and the figure, appears to belong to the Taba- 



1 Fabr. Ent. Syst. Em. iv. 276. 22, Latr. Hist. Nat. Sec. xiv. 283. Leipz. 

 Zeit. July 5. 1813, quoted in Germar's Mag. der Ent. ii. 185. In Kbllar's 

 Treatise on Insects injurious to Gardeners, Foresters, and Farmers " (Lond. 1840), 

 a valuable work, for a translation of Avhich from the German into English we 

 are indebted to the Misses Loudon, it is stated (p. 70.) that Dr. Schbnbauer, 

 late Professor of Natural History at Pesth, has ascertained that the swarms of 

 this fly, which he calls Simidia Columhaschensis, instead of proceeding, as the 

 Wallachians universally believe, from the jaws of the dragon killed by St. George, 

 and buried in certain caves in the limestone mountains near Columbaez in Servia, 

 out of the mouths of which they issue like smoke, in fact are bred in the exten- 

 sive swamps in this district, passing all their states of egg, larva, and nymph in 

 water. Vast swarms appeared in 1830 in a large tract of Austria, Hungary, and 

 Moravia, overflowed by the river Marsch, and hundreds of horses, cows, and 

 swine perished from their bite. Men are equally attacked by this scourge, but 

 can more easily defend themselves, and there are not wanting solitary examples 

 of little children dying from the excessive inflammation consequent on their 

 numerous punctures. 



