MORE ABOUT INSECTS 



69 



known in their young stages as buffalo bugs. Dried meats, 

 dried fruits and meal in our pantries are often found to har- 

 bour the young of moths and beetles, while in the tropics the 

 numerous large cockroaches will frequently reduce our window 

 curtains to shreads, destroy the bindings of our books, eat 

 labels from bottles, or even make a meal off of our toe-nails 

 as we sleep. The httle cheese-skipper, which in these days 

 we do not often see, is the grub of a small black fly. 



About the fruit on our tables, and especially about fruit 



Fig. 49. A deep sea fish. 

 For explanation of the figure see p. xii, 



exposed for sale in the markets, we often see dehcate pale 

 httle flies of slow and feeble flight, quite different from the 

 large, dark and vigorous house flies. Grapes are particularly 

 attractive to this fly, most so when bruised. Alcohol is the 

 magnet that attracts these flies to fruit, for they are able to 

 live only where alcohol is present. Though swahowing alcohol, 

 in large doses, too, with every mouthful they take in, their 

 little grubs do not subsist upon it; what they hve upon is the 

 yeast plant which, growing luxuriantly in the decaying fruit, 

 is continually transforming the sugar into alcohol. 



Fhes form the food of many spiders, and conversely spiders 



