EGGS OF FLIES. 33 



places of birth, the more we may be inclined (but with the 

 insect not justly) to hold them in contempt ; suffice it, that as 

 the domestic Fly makes himself quite at home in our houses, 

 so has his parent, in all likelihood, made herself equally free 

 of our stables, where she finds a hot-bed for her eggs, and in 

 the same a provision for her infant race. There, in their 

 first and wingless state of maggot or larva, they commence, thus 

 early, their important use of helping to rid the earth of all things 

 that offend, and on how grand a scale they are able to carry on 

 this operation may be estimated from the fact, that a single Fly 

 will lay no less than 177 eggs. House Flies come then chiefly 

 from the stable, the road, and the grazing meadow ; though 

 some nearly resembling them come from other places, and 

 exist in their earliest state on vegetable, instead of animal sub- 

 stances. Among these we have noticed a very common species, 

 which finds its first " bed and board *' between the upper and 

 under skins of dock-leaves, burrrowing and feeding on the 

 pulpy flesh. From spring to autumn, we may see them thus 

 busily employed, merely by gathering and holding to the light 

 such leaves as are to be found continually, not adorned by 

 large, discoloured, transparent blotches, the outward tokens of 

 their inward presence. These, from the above habit, may be 

 ranked among a set of insect labourers or feeders of more 

 classes than one, hence called Leaf-miners, some of whose 

 winding ways we mean, by and by, to follow. 



For query the second, and that just now more pertinent to 



