10 JULY 1953, Page 15

The Cleg

When a fly alighted on the back of my hand I felt the tickling sensation and then its bite which made me strike and kill it at once. It was what I was brought up to know as a cleg, one of the Tabanidae and a fly that makes horses bolt and heifers run like wild things. Working in the hayfield we often found clegs on our necks and arms and, although no one ever suffered the bite long enough to find out, it was said that the cleg would gorge on blood until he burst. I often had the task of keeping clegs. from a restless carthorse on a hot day and suffered the whip of the horse's tail as I did my best to kill the flies and so prevent the horse taking off at ,a gallop.