8 
thus “ Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is 
the next way to give poor Jades the Botsa happy descrip¬ 
tion of the popular notions respecting them of those days ; and 
the wretched nag of Petruchio, with his ill appearance and 
poveity, is in tiue character described as “ so begnawn with 
the Bots.” 
Feaiful apprehensions are entertained, even at this day, by 
the ignoiant; for if, by any chance, they are presented with the 
singulai spectacle of the Horse’s stomach having a cluster of 
-bots hanging to it, they are almost sure to enumerate it among 
the causes of his death, with expressions of horror, though 
amply accounted for by the actual destruction of some viscus, 
or other causes ; and seeing the coats of the stomach indented 
and impressed where they adhered, they let imagination carry 
them to the lea! perforation of the stomach, stating it as eaten 
up, and gnawed through by them. 
Knowledge, which usually unfolds her treasures to the labours 
of the industrious and persevering, first dawned on this branch 
of science in Italy, about the commencement of the last cen¬ 
tury, when the discovery of the circulation of the blood gave 
a zest to the studies of Anatomy, and called up much laborious 
investigation of the structure of the bodies of animals ; and 
the formation of the Royal Society held out an encouragement 
and place of deposit for the labours of the inquisitive, and 
brought about a more close and correct notice and considera¬ 
tion of the various objects of nature. 
Malpighi, as far as I yet know, was the first who undertook 
to describe them intelligibly, though very briefly, and only the 
Larva, in a paper or memoir laid before the Royal Society on 
a different subject.* The Larvae he described were found in 
the stomach of an Ass, and were probably those of the Oestrus 
* Malpighi Opera, De Structura Glandularum Epistola, p. 9. 
