OK THE BOTS OF HOKSES. 
593 
ing;, as it should properly do, the very cogent proofs of error 
which are adduced. However, humanum est errare ; and we are 
none of us exempt from the humiliating imputation of “ being in 
error,” therefore it were idle to be in a passion about it. Having- 
written much on this subject, errors have undoubtedly crept in, 
although they do not at present occur to the sagacity of my 
critics. The notions now broached as new and correct, existed 
inter vulgos half a century ago, and it was my business, and the 
especial object in my “ Essay on the Bots of Hoises,” to remove 
them. I thought I had succeeded, and all the naturalists of 
eminence during; forty years have coincided with me, as far as 
they have condescended to acquaint me with their views on the 
subject. It seems, however, that we are to go back to the old 
absurdity of the larvm of the oestri, without teeth, or any instru¬ 
ments of any kind whatever, gnawing through the horse’s sto¬ 
mach. And now, having performed this notable feat, what 
have they accomplished? Why, gnawed away their own standing, 
to effect their own destruction ; for, falling through the hole they 
have made, into the cavity of the abdomen, they must there 
inevitably perish. Now, suppose any one were to tell you that a 
caterpillar, without teeth or jaws, gnawed from under himself the 
leaf on which he stood, and very wisely tumbled himself to the 
ground, and there perished miserably! would you not laugh at 
such a folly ? Nature, or, more properly speaking, an all-wise Pro¬ 
vidence, does not commit such errors as these, but gives to all 
her creatures their food in due season, and a safe standing 
while they are eating it. Surely Linnaeus was right when he 
declared he could find no distinctive character between the genus 
Homo, and the genus Simla —by their acts shall ye know 
them whilst some are devotedly labouring to clear the stream 
of knowledge from all its impurities, others, with quadrumanous 
activity, busy themselves with scratching back those very impuri¬ 
ties again into the current. 
But I believe I can trace this nonsense to a preparation of Mr. 
Coleman’s, at that stupid Veterinary College, which preparation 
I saw a few years after publishing my work. It exhibits a mass 
of bots adhering to a piece of a horse’s stomach : some of the 
bots are deeply sunk into the substance, some are only half im¬ 
mersed in it, and some are bodily and completely passed through 
it. On seeing it, I was at first staggered, but, on consideration, 
I found a solution of this ridiculous anomaly. The piece of 
stomach has been allowed to become putrid, as its loose flocculent 
texture sufficiently shews; and then the bots, which possess a 
hardish body when contracted, while living, have been, cither 
