126 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



charged. — You have doubtless often observed in the heat of 

 the day the sheep shaking their heads and striking the ground 

 violently with their fore feet ; or running away and getting 

 into ruts, dry dusty spots or gravel pits, where crowding to- 

 gether they hold their noses close to the ground. The object 

 of all these actions and movements is to keep the gad-fly ap- 

 propriated to them (^OE. Ovis) from getting at their nostrils, 

 on the inner margin of which they lay their eggs, from 

 whence the maggots make their way into the head, feeding 

 in the maxillary and frontal sinuses on the mucilage there 

 produced. When full-grown, they fall through the nostrils 

 to the ground, and assume the pupa. Whether the animal 

 suflers much pain from these troublesome assailants is not 

 ascertained. Sometimes the maggots make their way even 

 into the brain. I have been informed by a very accurate and 

 intelligent friend, that, on opening the head of one of his 

 sheep which died in consequence of a vertigo, three maggots 

 were found in it in a line just above the eyes, and that be- 

 hind them there was a bladder of water. — Perhaps you are 

 not aware that the bots we are speaking of, or rather those in 

 the head of goats, have been prescribed as a remedy for the 

 epilepsy, and that from the tripod of Delphos. Yet so we 

 are told, on the authority of Alexander Trallien. Whether 

 Democrates, who consulted the oracle, was cured by this re- 

 medy does not appear ; the story shows however that the an- 

 cients were aware of the station of these larvae. — The com- 

 mon saying that a whimsical person is maggoty, or has got 

 maggots in his head, perhaps arose from the freaks the sheep 

 have been observed to exhibit when infested by their bots. — 

 The flesh-fly is also a great annoyance to the fleecy tribe, es- 

 pecially in fenny countries ; and if constant attention be not 

 paid them, they are soon devoured by its insatiable larvae. 

 In Lincolnshire, a principal profit of the druggists is derived 

 from the sale of a mercurial ointment Lised to destroy them. — 

 In tropical countries the sheep frequently sufler from the 

 ants. Bosman relates that when in Gruinea, if one of his was 

 attacked by them in the night, which often happened, it was 

 invariably destroyed, and was so expediously devoured that 

 in the morning only the skeleton would be left. 



