7 
especially those situated near parks of deer, might find it an inte¬ 
resting pursuit. These early Byzantine Veterinarians imagined 
this Bot fell from the stomach into the head of the stag, whilst 
the animal was in the act of grazing.* 
Aristotle is also conceived to have alluded to these Insects 
in the prefatory part of his history of animals, in the following 
passage “ There are, moreover, animals which first live in 
water” afterwards, their form changed, they pass their lives out 
of it, as the Water Gnats, and after the same manner come the 
Oestros, which afterwards infest animals. Aiistotle, it is 
probable, used this term in a general sense for all such animals 
of the fly kind as infest the Horse, without having in view 
this Genus, as constituted by modern naturalists.f 
Our ancestors of these isles, at no very distant peiiod, entei- 
tained notions as ill founded and vague as any the antients had 
ever conceived ; for they supposed them somehow engendered 
of putrefaction and corruption, and that poverty and bad diet, 
were favourable to their production. Blundeyille wrote on 
Horses in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and his words respect¬ 
ing them are these “ And the third sort of worms be short 
and thick, like the end of a man’s little finger, and therefore 
be called Truncheons, though they have divers shapes, accord¬ 
ing to the diversitie of the place perhaps where they breede 
or”else according to the figure of the petrified matter whereof 
they breede : yet they no doubt proceed all of one cause, that 
is to say, of a rawe, grosse, phlegmaticke matter, apt to putre¬ 
faction, engendered most commonly by fowle feeding,” &c. 
Book III. chap. xcvi. p.43. 
Our great dramatist, Shakspeare, in the same manner, makes 
the ostler at Rochester, in the play of Henry the Fourth, say 
* Editio Basilise, p. 142. Ibid. Latine reddita Ruellio, P- 55. 
t Duval’s Aristot. Lib. I. cap. i. Tom. II. p- 153. 
