The horse is persecuted by at least three kinds of flies. One, the common house-fly, settles on his ears and different parts of his body, tickling and teasing him. Another is a larger fly,' termed the gad or cleg; it is a bloodsucker, bites pretty smartly, and irritates some tender-skinned horses almost to madness. They gallop about the field in every direction, stamp their feet, tear up the ground, and often kick as if something were behind them. Sometimes they rush into the water to escape the attacks of these formidable insects. It is this fly, I suppose that produces the bot-worm, so often found in the stomach of a horse that has been at grass. [The bot-fly never bites the horse. He irritates him merely. The gad-fly, which so much annoys the horse, is a different one from the bot-fly.] The female deposites her eggs on the hair about the shoulder, neck, and knees; a glutinous matter in which they are enveloped fastens them to the hair. When the horse or his companion licks these places, he swallows some of the eggs, which are hatched in the stomach.

The worms are each furnished with two little hooks, by which they adhere to the surface of the stomach till spring arrives, when they are evacuated, and soon become flies like the parent.

There is a third kind of fly, which annoys the pastured horse a good deal. I do not know its name. It is a small insect, and lives on blood. It attacks those parts where the skin is thinnest; the eyelids, inside and outside, the sheath, and the vagina, are often much bitten by it. The eyelids especially always swell where this fly abounds, and the swelling is sometimes so great as to make the horse nearly blind. The eye is red and weeping. Some suffer much more than others. I have never seen any permanently injured.

The principal defence the horse has against these puny, but tormenting enemies, is his tail. On some parts of the body the horse can remove them with his teeth, and his feet, and that which the feet and the teeth can not do is done by the tail. But in this country, so eminently the seat of freedom and wisdom, the effective instrument with which nature furnishes him is almost invariably removed before the horse has attained maturity; as the pains of servitude were not sufficiently great and numerous, domesticity is rendered still more intolerable by caprice. The tail, though useful, is not ornamental, and therefore it must suffer amputation. In such works the lords of creation delight to exhibit their pride and their power.