OX GAD FLY. 
45 
fly, the galloping of the cattle is as bad from this cause as from 
Warble Fly presence. 
The Ox Gad Fly, figured below, life size, is very much larger than 
the Warble Fly, and is mostly brown or bees-wax colour; the abdomen 
handsomely banded across with alternate brown and tawny yellow. 
This fly does mischief by piercing into the hide with the sharp knife- 
or lancet-like apparatus, enclosed in its proboscis, possessed by the 
female, and sucking away the blood. This is a great distinction 
Tabanus bovinus, “Ox Gad Fly”; side view, showing proboscis. 
between the Gad Fly and the Warble Fly, which has nothing that can 
be called a feeding-mouth. 
The two kinds of flies differ also in their early stages. The maggot 
of the Gad Fly never lives in the hides of cattle. It lives in the ground, 
something in the manner of the Daddy Longlegs grub, and, somewhat 
similarly, is long and cylindrical, and it has a shining brown elongated 
head. The chrysalis is long and somewhat cylindrical, and both in 
development and pupation these Gad Flies resemble the Daddy Long- 
legs. The buzz of this great fly is described as a kind of heavy, 
droning, intense noise, easily known when it has once been heard. 
I believe this fly not to be very common in England, and I have 
only rarely received specimens ; but it is sometimes greatly confused 
with the Warble Fly, without the slightest regard to its very name 
showing the difference of possession of the “mouth-gads,” or prickers, 
which are such a clear distinction, and therefore it seems desirable to 
mention it. 
As far as we are aware, the same deterrent dressings which are 
useful against the Warble Fly serve equally well against this Gad Fly. 
It will be observed that in the remarks by Mr. David Byrd, at p. 44, 
he mentions, “ The brisket was dressed to keep the Gad Fly away.” 
