HOW A FLY FEEDS. 41 



convenient enough when inserted into a saucer of syrup, or 

 applied to the broken surface of an over-ripe blackberry, but 

 we often see our sipper of sweets quite as busy on a solid lump 

 of sugar, which we shall find on close inspection growing 

 " small by degrees " under his attack. How, without grinders, 

 does he accomplish the consumption of such crystal condiment ? 

 A magnifier will solve the difficulty, and show how the Fly 

 dissolves his rock, Hannibal fashion, by a diluent, a salivary 

 fluid passing down through the same pipe which returns the 

 sugar melted into syrup. 



Dear readers, we have been trying to do something of the 

 same kind ; to melt down a modicum from the mass of obser- 

 vations (you might possibly consider it a dry one) collected by 

 the curious, concerning that not unimportant atom in creation 

 called a Ply. But though our modicum may be but as a drop 

 of syrup to a whole sugar-loaf, some of you, perchance, it may 

 have already cloyed, and to some even have been tinctured 

 strongly with poppy extract. Sugar, however, as every artist 

 in that plastic material well knows, can be made to assume 

 every variety of shape and hue : so may the sweets of know- 

 ledge be moulded into every form and painted of every colour, 

 and must be, to make them palatable. Hitherto we have but 

 melted the unsullied substance drawn from fact : presently 

 we may try to colour it, and present you with a painted 

 sugar-plum of fiction, wherein the centre (the place of the 

 carraway) shall still be occupied by a Fly. Meanwhile let us 



D 2 



