SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
187 
and sharper, and being of a lighter color. It does not 
always pass at once to the rectum, but some times fastens 
on stomach, where it is found in the Spring. When 
near the fundament, injections of currier’s oil brings away 
these iKJts without difficulty Dr. Leach makes the Gas- 
terojphUis into a separate genus, of which he describes 
five British species; but whether there are more than 
one species in this country, or whether some designated 
as distinct species are more than varietiex^ it is not 
necessary to our present purpose to inquire. The 
well known stomach bot-fly is about seven lines in length, 
its general color is a clear yellowish brown, its head 
broad and obtuse; its thorax has a greyish color; its ab 
domen is a rusty brown, with a tinge of yellow, and has 
a series of dorsal spots ; its wings are whitish, with a 
black undulating transverse fascia behind the middle. 
The female secretes a glue-like substance with v/hich she 
fastens each egg to the hair; which, however, the moist 
lips and tongue of the horse readily remove and from the 
latter, it passes into his stomach with saliva, water, or 
food. The laeva is soon out of its shell, has fifteen wings, 
many spinelets, and a tough skin, and is, at maturity, 
from twelve to fifteen lines in length. Jts thickness is 
about a quarter of its length ; while it is favored with two 
hooks one on either side of its mandibles, to fasten its 
head and anchor its body to the lining membrane of the 
stomach. 
A few of these internal parasites appear to do little, or 
no appreciable injury to a horse, under ordinary circum- 
stances ; no more ihsii do a fevv lice or ticks on horned 
cattle. But where one takes no care to keep down their 
number, his horses are in peril. 
Our esteemed correspondent “ F. J. R ” who has an ar- 
ticle on this subject in the last Cultivator, ^appears to be- 
lieve that tiec.iuse the maggots of flies lake in their food 
by suction, they are incapable of making their way 
through the compact tissues of the stomach, skin, and mus- 
cular substances. Other writers have advanced a similar 
idea, but it is erroneous. That the laeva of common flesh- 
flies^ which subsist on the flesh of dead animals, and aie 
so troubles me to housekeepers by their depredations on 
meat^ steadily work their way tlirough the hard cellular tis- 
sue which surrounds fat, and the fascia of muscles, is 
known to every observer; and these blowing flies too of 
ten ov posit on bad wounds, sores and ulcers, as well as 
on the bodies of persons in the last stages of fatal disease, 
not to have the fact equally well established and that their 
young penetrate living tissues also. ’J’he followeig ac- 
count, moie at large, may be found in Kirby & Spence’s 
Entomology, page 109: “On Thursday, June 2.o. died 
at Asbonby (Lincolnshire) John Page, a piuper belong- 
ing to Silk Willoughby, under circumstances truly siiiiju- 
lar. Begging bread and meat from door to door, which, 
when he received more than he would eat immediately, 
he stored between liis shirt and skin. H.iving a emside- 
rable portion of this food in store, so deposited, he was ta- 
ken unwell, and laid himself down in a fi' IJ in the par- 
ish of Scredington — when from the heal of tiie sea-on, 
the meat soon became putrid, and was struck by the tlirs. 
The maggots devoured not only the inanimate [lieces oi 
flesh, but also the living flesh of the man ; and after he 
was accidentally found by the inhabitants, and they 
cleared away these shocking vermin, he was conveyed to 
Asbonby, and a surgeon [irocured, who s<dd it would 
probably prove fatal” Page lived Imt a few hours, hav- 
ing maggots of. an enormous size crawling both in and 
over bis body, 
There is every re.nson to believe that matrgots produced 
by the boi-flv would find as little d fli uliy in perimaiing 
the s nmach of a horse, if so ioclinel, as did tlm.se ili.,r. 
trade ihiur way through tlte.^k n, abdominal muscles, and 
perilofiieum of this live pauper; aud. iliereiore, it it is un- 
philosophical to assume as F J. R. does, that an emp- 
ty stomach or its gastric juice will, strangely enough, di- 
gast the stomach into something like a honey comb, and 
thus enable bots to pas.s through it. To place the fact 
that bots sometimes pass through holes made in the stom- 
ache of a horse on record in this work, which may be of 
use for future reference, we copy the statement of the Rev. 
Dr. DnwtiYof Rochester, N. Y., from the April number of 
the Genesee Farmery 1841 : 
“ I once saw in the stomach of a fine horse that had died 
from their action, mvltituJes of hots sticking into the coats, 
and many of them had 'pierced throngh that orgaiiy so that 
on scraping them off with a knife the liquid matter of the 
stomach passed through its coats.* Those bots were large 
[* It is contended by many able writers on this subject, 
that the coats of thestoma<..h are never pierced through by 
the bot until afterlife leaves the animal. There is not 
much uncertainty connected with this branch of the mat- 
ter. — Junior Editor ] 
and strong, and of a deep flesh-color.” Prof Drwey is 
well known by his scientific coutributions toSilliman’s 
Journal; and no man’s word will go farther than his. 
Not to do these comparatively long-lived maggots injus- 
tice, we are constrained to say ih.at their attacks on the 
muscular coats of the stomach as food are rare, and it is 
probably only when they, unfortunately, exist in great 
numbers that they are driven to the necessity of killing 
tlieir foster-parent, aud thus jeoparding their own lives. 
Nothing is plainer than the fart ahat, were bots to destroy 
a horse within two, three or four months after they attach 
themselves to the inside of his stomach, every one would 
inevitably peri.sh before it became a pupa or fly. They 
want a warm nidus and their daily and appropriate food 
at least nine months. A dead carcass is soon cold and 
its flesh dissipated Hence 'his whole family of insects 
generally destroy their young when they kill their horse., 
ox, sheep, deer, camel or other beast that supports their off- 
spring. 
To reduce the number of bots in the stomachs of our 
hordes, we make it a point in our stock economy to wash 
off all nits, with icarni watery from our horses, as soon af- 
ter they are oviposited as practicable. This prevention is 
simple, plain, and any serv.ant can practice it. With some 
knowledge of medicine, and some experience in ibe care 
of horses, we are coastrajned to say thatour faith is feeble 
indeed in any internal remedy for Imts. 
The Ox-hntfly or “ ” of some Engli.sh authors, 
{(estrus i5»c>y/.s)resembles a small humtile-bee, from wliich it 
IS disiinguished l>y the want of two under wings; it is 
larger than a house fly, has brown unspotted wings, a 
black bind on the aiidomen, which is covered at the end 
with a reddish-yellow hair. For piercing the skin on the 
iiacks of cattle, actually boring, a,s with a gimlet, a hole 
largo enouiih to insert her ovipositor <uid an egg, the fe- 
rn tie has a very curious apparatus. It is made of four 
pieces which slip one into the other like tlmse 'f a tele- 
.-.cope, tne itinio.-.t of which is armed with five sharp 
poii.Ms, three of which arc longer than the otfiers. She 
never puls more than one egg in a hole; and nirely so 
many in liic skin of one animal as to endanger iis life. 
•Aristotle, Pliny, Virgil and many other aricif^nt writers 
give mccotmts more m' less trutldul of the attacks of this 
i ga l or go.ird-fly. All t!;e old Kngli.-li, and half of the 
j nmdt rii authors, including both London and Wilson, who 
j have treated on “geMpnincs” advi.-e Imniers to have slip 
' x-yokes so that o;<eii whm stung by the gad fly in the 
! fit-[d, may ho cleared at once, atid allowed to run strriigkt 
i all! a I (as it is said they do under such circum'tances) 
atidnotiire ik tlie plow, nr cart. Tliis is notaUfmcy; 
far every one who has In en much a'mut c utle l^as seen 
tdeni raise their tails in a line horizontal to their i'a'‘ks, 
and run viulemly without any apparent cause. Vikcil. 
