266 
not see, and in darkness he neighed for his comrades who stood feed¬ 
ing beside him 
The Marquis di Spineto, in a memoir published “ On the Zimb of 
Bruce as connected with the Hieroglyphics of Egyptf,” endeavoured 
to ascertain the characters of this insect, and came to the conclusion 
that it belongs to the order Diptera, notwithstanding Bruce says that 
it very much resembles the Bee genus, and that it has “ several of the 
properties of the Bombylius , the Tabanus , the Oestrus, and the Hip- 
pobosca, without belonging to any of them. In some of its generic 
and even specific characters it is like the Bombylius and CEstrus , in 
others like the Hippobosca and the Muscidae , in a few like the Taba¬ 
nus and the Dog-fly, whilst in the aggregate it differs from every one 
of these insects.” The Marquis points out the various relationships 
which the insect, as described by Bruce, presents to these different 
genera, considering that the porrected hairs or bristles forming the 
mouth “perform the office of suckers, simply because it does not lay 
its eggs in the flesh of animals; for according to the account which 
Bruce gives of the evils attending the attacks of this fly, the bosses 
which are produced swell, break and putrefy, but never exhibit any 
larvse or maggots,” thus differing from the habits of the CEstri; to 
which however he adds, by some curious misconception, that “ the 
larvae of the CEstrus live in wood , which does not seem to be the case 
with the Zimb” 
The Marquis however identifies the Zimb with the Kvvoyvia or 
‘Dog-fly’ of the Greeks, the ‘Tsai tsalya Kelb’ of the Alexandrian 
Church, the ‘Af an ouhor’ of the ancient Egyptians, the ‘Arob’ or 
‘ Oreb ’ of Exodus viii. 21, and the ‘ CEstrus’ of Aristotle ; and con¬ 
siders that it is the precise species of fly which caused the fourth of 
the plagues of Egypt J. As such, he also regards it as the insect 
represented on the Egyptian monuments at the head of the cartouches 
which enclose the hieroglyphical titles of the Pharaohs, and as a sym¬ 
bol of Lower Egypt (where only the insect occurs), the preceding 
figure being intended for a sceptre, in contradiction to the opinion of 
M. Champollion, who regards the figure of the insect as that of a 
bee ; and consequently the signification of the two symbols as that of 
“ King of an obedient people.” I can by no means however agree 
with this opinion of the Marquis Spineto, since an examination of 
various Egyptian monuments in the British Museum and elsewhere 
(in all of which the insect is represented under precisely the same 
form) has convinced me that it is intended to represent a Hymeno- 
pterous insect, and not one of the Diptera. It is in fact more like 
the figure of a common Wasp than any other ordinary insect; the 
* Five Years of a Hunter’s Life in the Far Interior of South Africa, ii. pp. 220, 
227. 
■f Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag. 1834, vol. iv. p. 170. 
X In the Article “ Musquitoe” (Brit. Cyclop. Nat. Hist. iii. 299), I have sug¬ 
gested various reasons for supposing that the fourth plague of Egypt was caused 
by some species of Culicidce, which, although not disproved, are certainly weakened 
by the knowledge now obtained of the real habits of the Tsetse or Zimb. 
