414 INSECTS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



The Anthomyians, or flower-flies (Anthomyiad,e), are easily 

 distinguished from the preceding flies, which they otherwise re- 

 semble, by the smaller size of their winglets, and by the mesh in 

 the middle of their wings, which is long, narrow, and open at the 

 end. They are smaller insects than the foregoing, their flight is 

 more feeble, their wings, when at rest, do not spread so much, 

 and the bristle on the last joint of their antenna? is not often 

 feathered. Most of them frequent flowers, and are sometimes 

 seen sporting together, in large swarms, in the air, like certain 

 kinds of gnats. In the larva state some of them live in manure, 

 and in rotten vegetable substances ; others are found in the roots 

 of living plants, such as onions, radishes, turnips, and even in the 

 pulpy parts of leaves and of stems, which they devour. The 

 latter have nearly the same form as the maggots of common flies ; 

 some of the former are shorter, flattened, and fringed on the sides 

 with feathery hairs. 



Many instances are recorded of these fringed maggots having 

 been discharged from the human body. They are supposed to 

 be the young of a fly named Anthomyia (Homalomyia) scalaris.* 

 Flies closely resembling this are sometimes seen in privies, and a 

 friend has presented me with one of them, together with the dried 

 larva-skin out of which it came. The larva was found in excre- 

 ment. The fly is grayish black, and hairy, with large copper- 

 colored eyes, which are surrounded by a narrow silvery white 

 line. It measures one quarter of an inch in length. The larva- 

 skin has two rows of hairs on the back, and two more on each 

 side. Another fly, sometimes seen on windows in the autumn, 

 is produced, if I mistake not, from a hairy maggot that lives in 

 rotten turnips. This fly strikingly resembles the Anthomyia 

 canicularis of Europe, and is possibly identical with it. It is of 

 a dark gray color, with copper-colored eyes, encircled by a sil- 

 very white line, and with a large, semi-transparent, yellowish 

 spot on each side of the first three rings of the hind-body. It 

 measures rather less than one quarter of an inch in length. The 

 fringed maggots of the canicularis are stated by some naturalists 



* For an account of Hie transformations of the fly of privies, with figures, see 

 Swammerdam's " Uook of Nature," translated by Hill, Part II., p. 38, plate 3c\ 



