122 



ENTOMOLOGY. 



out of the body like the joints of a telescope, and form a 

 sort of egg-layer (ovipositor). Flies have no sting, though 

 certain kinds can bite and stab with their mouth-parts. 



The legs are long and slender, and, like the body, they 

 are covered with fine but stiff bristles. There are five toe- 

 joints, the last one with two claws. Beneath the claws is 

 a cushion divided into two lobes or divisions, and armed 

 with hairs, which are tubular, and secrete a sticky fluid, 

 which aids the fly in walking upside-down on glass windows 

 or the ceiling of a room. 



House-flies are attracted to horse-manure, in which the 

 young live in great numbers. On placing a fly in a glass 



Fi6 142. The early stages of the common house-fly. A, dorsal, and B, side, 

 view of the larva; a, air-tubes; sp, spiracle. C, the spiracle, enlarged. F, 

 head of the same larva, enlarged ; bl, labrum (?); md. mandibles; mx, maxillae; 

 at, antennae. E, a terminal spiracle, much enlarged. D, puparium; sp, spir- 

 acle. All the figures much enlarged. 



bottle, she laid, between 6 P.M., August 12th, and 8 o'clock 

 the next morning, 120 eggs, depositing them in stacks or 

 piles. 



The egg is long and slender, cylindrical, and .04 to .05 

 of an inch long and about one fourth as thick. In twenty- 

 four hours after it is deposited the larva or maggot hatches, 

 and is as represented in Fig. 142, A. It is a footless, 

 smooth, round, white worm, with the merest rudiments of 



