In order to see the interior of the cavity of an animal gall,
Réaumur opened several, either with a razor or a pair of scissors;
the operation, however, cannot fail to be painful to the cow, and
consequently renders it impatient under the process. The grub being
confined in a tolerably large fistulous ulcer, a part of the cavity
must necessarily be filled with pus or matter. The bump is a sort of
cautery, which has been opened by the insect, as issues are made by
caustic: the grub occupies this issue, and prevents it from closing.
If the pus or matter which is in the cavity, and that which is daily
added to it, had no means of escaping, each tumor would become a
considerable abscess, in which the grub would perish; but the hole of
the bump, which admits the entrance of the air, permits the pus or
matter to escape; that pus frequently mats the hairs together which
are above the small holes, and this drying around the holes acquires a
consistency, and forms in the interior of the opening a kind of ring.
This matter appears to be the only aliment allowed for the grub, for
there is no appearance that it lives, like the grubs of flesh-flies,
upon putrescent meat. Mandibles, indeed, similar to those with which
other grubs break their food, are altogether wanting. A beast which
has thirty, forty, or more of these bumps upon its back, would be in a
condition of great pain and suffering, terrible indeed in the extreme,
if its flesh were torn and devoured by as many large grubs; but there
is every appearance that they do not at all afflict, or only afflict it
with little pain. For this reason cattle most covered with bumps are
not considered by the farmer as injured by the presence of the fly,
which generally selects those in the best condition.
A fly, evidently of the same family with the preceding, is described
in Bruce's 'Travels,' under the name of zimb, as burrowing during its
grub state in the hides of the elephant, the rhinoceros, the camel, and
cattle. "It resembles," he says, "the gad-fly in England, its motion
being more sudden and rapid than that of a bee. There is something
peculiar in the sound or buzzing of this insect; it is a jarring noise
together with a humming, which as soon as it is heard all the cattle
forsake their food and run wildly about the plain till they die, worn
out with fatigue, fright, and hunger. I have found," he adds, "some of
these tubercles upon almost every elephant and rhinoceros that I have
seen, and attribute them to this cause. When the camel is attacked
by this fly, his body, head, and legs break out into large bosses,
which swell, break, and putrefy, to the certain destruction of the
creature."[GU] That camels die under such symptoms, we do not doubt;
but we should not, without more minutely-accurate observation, trace
all this to the breeze-fly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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