XIV, 2 Banks: Bloodsucking Insects of the Philippines 177 
posing animal and vegetable substances ; Mitzmain, who has 
worked out their life history in the Philippines, says that or- 
dinary wet filter paper served as food for them. 
The bite of the adults is very painful, but its effects soon 
pass. Clothing such as is worn in the tropics is no impediment 
to their attacks. They frequently bite through stockings or 
through a shirt and undershirt. Bare-legged children, especially 
when sleeping, are common victims of their attacks, as are 
also cattle and horses which they annoy very greatly, espe- 
cially in the city of Manila, where they are exceedingly abundant. 
They do not restrict their feeding to these animals but will also 
bite monkeys, carabaos, goats, sheep, guinea pigs, cats, deer, 
dogs, rabbits, chickens, bats, rats, and lizards, at least under 
experimental conditions.^® 
The cattle fly {Lyperosia exigvxi de Meij.) is a common pest 
of bovine animals throughout the Islands. It congregates in hun- 
dreds upon every part of the body of work cattle and causes them 
an endless amount of annoyance. The swarms on one side of 
an animal simply transfer to the other side at the approach of 
an observer, but they do this with no special hurry, particularly 
when partially filled with blood. The coat of a cow will fre- 
quently be found to be matted with dried blood, which in some 
cases has exuded after the withdrawal of the insect’s proboscis ; 
in others it is the bloody faecal matter voided by these little 
gluttons in the act of almost continuous feeding for an hour 
at a time. The insects remain upon the host when not feeding, 
simply resting upon the extremities of the hairs; but, when 
about to suck blood, they- of necessity bury themselves deeply 
into the hairy coat, and nothing remains visible except the tips 
of their wings. The fact that they breed in cow and carabao 
dung, laying their eggs within a few minutes of the time it 
is voided, makes combatting them extremely difficult here. 
Both of these genera are somewhat closely related to the 
deadly tsetse fly {Glossina spp.), of Africa, and might well play 
a role similar to that of the latter. 
Two other species of bloodsucking flies, belonging to the 
genus Philaematomyia, namely P. crassirostris Stein and P. 
inferior Stein, are closely related to the genus Musca, and are 
reported from the Philippines as attacking cattle. They are 
related to P. insignis recorded from tropical Africa and the 
Oriental Region, a valuable account of the mouth parts of which 
Philip. Journ. Sci., Sec. B (1913), 8, 29. 
- ’"Mitzmain, Philip. .Jottrn. Sci., Sec. B (1913), 8, 41. 
