ANNUAL REPORT 0E NEVV-YORK STATE SOCIETY. 
479 
SUPPLEMENT. 
this motion it worked itself out and dropped upon the floor. It 
proved to be a very large soft blackish grub with numerous paler 
spots. It was about an inch long and half as broad, oval, 
slightly depressed, divided into segments, with its surface covered 
with small, shining elevations resembling the granular surface oi 
morocco leather. It had no feet or jaws that he could perceive. 
On showing him the figure of the larva of CEstrus Bovis in West¬ 
wood’s Introduction, vol. ii, page 580, fig. 1, he recognizes a 
resemblance to that altogether more than to any of the other 
larvae figured in that part of the volume. It seemed from its 
motions to be a formidable, ferocious creature. He put some 
damp chip dirt into a tin box and placed it thereon, it having 
been exposed to the air only about four minutes. It immediately 
worked its head down into the dirt and soon buried itself, evi¬ 
dently understanding what it was about. Mr. Reid brings this 
box and the squirrel to me. I sink the box in a flower bed in my 
yard and invert a glass tumbler over it. On examining the squir¬ 
rel I find the fleshy glandular tissue of the testicles wholly con¬ 
sumed, nothing of them remaining but their empty outer skin. 
Mr. Reid says the fact is well known to hunters, that of the grey 
and other squirrels killed in this vicinity, at least one half of the 
males are castrated. It is the current opinion with them that 
this deformity is caused by the squirrels’ seizing and biting out 
the testicles of their comrades, some of them strenuously main¬ 
taining that they have seen these animals engaged in this act. 
There are some hunters, however, that say they have found two 
grubs in the scrotum of some squirrels, and they conjecture that 
it is by these that the testicles are destroyed. 
August 22, 1856. Mr. llurst, Taxidermist of the State Cabi¬ 
net of Natural History, informs me that on one occasion he saw a 
half dozen red squirrels (Sciurus Hudsonius) unite in mastering a 
gray one (S. Catoliniensis) and castrating him. He had so fair 
and distinct a view that there could be no mistake as to the fact, 
his eyes witnessing the very work in which the animals were 
engaged. Query. May it not be a flesh-fly which drops its egg 
into the wound of the castrated squirrel, from which grows the 
grub which Mr. Reid brought me 1 
September 1st, 1S56. Mr. Reid brings me a striped squirrel 
